The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek - Norman Russell

OX F O R D E A R LY C H R I S T I A N S T U D I E S General Editors Gillian Clark Andrew Louth

THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient historians, and specialists in the classical and Jewish worlds. Titles in the series include: The Cult of Saint Thecla A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity Stephen T. Davis (2001) Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution Richard Paul Vaggione, OHC (2001) Ambrose: De Officiis Edited with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary lvor J. Davidson (2002) St John Damascene Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology Andrew Louth (2002) Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians Introduction, Translation (with facing Latin text), and Notes Eric Plumer (2002) The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption Stephen J. Shoemaker (2002) The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica Hamilton Hess (2002) The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians Ronald E. Heine (2002) Grace and Christology in the Early Church Donald Fairbairn (2003) Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus Translation, Introduction, and Commentary Robert E. Sinkewicz (2003) Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith Union, Knowledge, and the Divine Presence Martin Laird (2004) The Suffering of the Impassible God The Dialectics of Patristic Thought Paul L. Gavrilyuk (2004) Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic Susan Wessel (2004) The Byzantine Christ Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor Demetrios Bathrellos (2004)

The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition

N O R M A N RU S S E L L

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Norman Russell 2004 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 First published in paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data applied for Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn ISBN 0–19–926521–6 ISBN 0–19–920597–3 (Pbk.)

978–0–19–926521–3 978–0–19–920597–4 (Pbk.)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To the memory of Elizabeth Moraitis Russell 1916–1983

This page intentionally left blank

Preface

It is becoming less necessary in the English-speaking world to apologize for the doctrine of deification. At one time it was regarded as highly esoteric, if it was admitted to be Christian at all. But since the appearance in 1957 of the English version of Lossky’s brilliant book on the Eastern Church’s mystical theology, steady progress in the translation of modern Greek theologians such as Mantzaridis, Nellas, and Yannaras, as well as the publication in English of studies by John Zizioulas and the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staˇniloae, have brought the importance of deification (or theosis) in Orthodox soteriology to the attention of a wide readership. In recent years a succession of works on deification in individual Fathers from Irenaeus to Maximus the Confessor has confirmed the patristic basis of the doctrine. Since the 1950s several studies have shown how deification, in a more muted way, is also at home in the Western tradition. The present work, based on an Oxford doctoral dissertation submitted in 1988, is the fruit of nearly twenty years of study and research. During that time I have incurred a number of debts. The first is to my former colleagues at the London Oratory who generously gave me leave of absence and shouldered the additional burdens that arose for them in consequence. I must also record my deep gratitude to the friends and relations who funded my doctoral studies, especially Ursula Hand and Shirley Thorp. Of my early mentors I mention with affection and gratitude Father Louis Bouyer, who first pointed me in the direction of theosis, and Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, who supervised my initial research. I owe a number of insights and improvements to my examiners, Rowan Williams and Anthony Meredith. Since beginning the work of revision I have also benefited from the erudition and kindness of many others. I am especially grateful to Sebastian Brock, Henry Chadwick, and Lucas Siorvanes, who responded generously to my enquiries about deification in the Syriac Fathers, St Augustine, and Proclus, respectively. I should also like to thank Judith Herrin and Andrew Louth for inviting me to present portions of the work to their graduate students at the Universities of London and Durham, and Mother Nikola OSB for inviting me to conduct a study day on theosis at Minster Abbey. My thanks are due to Lucy Qureshi of Oxford University Press and the editors of the Oxford Early Christian Studies series, Gillian Clark and Andrew Louth, for accepting the book for the series. I am grateful, too, to

viii

Preface

Linda Bartlett and Andrea Rafferty for their expertise in putting a handwritten manuscript into the form required by the Press. Andrew Louth and Richard Price, who read the entire typescript, saved me from numerous errors and made many valuable suggestions. I am very grateful to them both. I am also much indebted to Charles Lomas for his help on points of style. Finally, the dedication of this book to my mother reflects more than customary pietas. My mother not only taught me Greek in my earliest childhood but also nurtured in me a love of the Fathers and Byzantine civilization. May her memory be eternal. Norman Russell Sunday of the Holy Fathers, 2004

Contents

Abbreviations

xiii

1

Introduction 1. The Metaphor of Deification 2. The Need for the Study 3. Scope and Method 4. Overview

1 1 3 7 9

2

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World 1. The Origins of Deification 2. The Ruler-Cult 3. Jewish and Christian Attitudes to the Ruler-Cult 4. The Democratization of the Ruler’s Apotheosis 5. The Mystery Cults 6. Philosophical Religion 7. The Egyptian Hermetists 8. Interaction with Christianity

16 16 18 23 26 28 34 44 50

3

The Jewish Paradigm: From Ezekiel to the yored merkavah 1. Ancient Israel 2. The Impact of Hellenism 3. Palestinian Judaism 4. The Rabbinic Tradition 5. Influence on Christianity

53 53 55 65 71 76

4

The Earliest Christian Model: Participatory Union with Christ 1. Pauline Christianity 2. Jewish Christianity 3. Johannine Christianity 4. Ignatius of Antioch 5. Valentinian Christianity 6. Justin Martyr 7. Two Anonymous Contemporaries 8. Tatian 9. Theophilus of Antioch

79 79 85 87 89 92 96 101 102 103

x

Contents 10. Irenaeus of Lyons 11. Hippolytus of Rome 12. The Early Christian Approach to Deification

105 110 112

5

The Alexandrian Tradition I: Christian Schools and Study Circles 1. Alexandrian Christianity 2. The School of Basilides 3. The School of Pantaenus 4. Clement of Alexandria 5. Origen 6. Didymus the Blind 7. The Alexandrian Concept of Deification

115 115 119 120 121 140 154 161

6

The Alexandrian Tradition II: The Imposition of Episcopal Control 1. The Eclipse of the Independent Teacher 2. Athanasius 3. Apollinarius of Laodicea 4. Cyril of Alexandria 5. The Legacy of Alexandria

164 164 166 188 191 204

7

The Cappadocian Approach: Divine Transcendence and the Soul’s Ascent 1. Basil of Caesarea 2. Gregory of Nazianzus 3. Gregory of Nyssa 4. The Cappadocian Achievement

206 206 213 225 232

8

The Monastic Synthesis: The Achievement of Maximus the Confessor 1. Evagrius Ponticus 2. The Macarian writings 3. Diadochus of Photice 4. Dionysius the Areopagite 5. Maximus the Confessor

235 238 241 246 248 262

9

Epilogue 1. Leontius of Jerusalem 2. John Damascene 3. Symeon the New Theologian 4. Gregory Palamas 5. The Dissemination of Hesychast Spirituality 6. Modern Approaches to Deification

296 296 299 301 304 309 312

Contents Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography Indexes

Deification in the Syriac and Latin Traditions The Greek Vocabulary of Deification

xi 321 333 345 381

This page intentionally left blank

Abbreviations

ACW ANF Ath. Mitt. BJRL CBQ CCSG CCSL CH CIG CPG

CR CSCO CSEL CSS CWS DOP DS GCS GNO HTR ICC IGR JBL JEH JHS JRS JTS LCC LCL

Ancient Christian Writers Ante-Nicene Fathers Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, Berlin Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Washington, DC Corpus christianorum, series graeca, Turnhout Corpus christianorum, series latina, Turnhout Corpus Hermeticum A. Boeckh (ed.), Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, Berlin, 1828–77 M. Geerard and F. Glorie (eds), Clavis Patrum Graecorum, 5 vols, CCSG, Turnhout, 1974–87; supplementary vol., M. Geerard and J. Noret (eds), 1998 Classical Review, Oxford Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, Louvain Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, Vienna Cistercian Studies Series The Classics of Western Spirituality Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Washington, DC M. Viller et al. (eds), Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, Paris, 1932–95 Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, Berlin Gregorii Nyseni Opera Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass. International Critical Commentary R. Cagnat et al. (eds), Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes, vols i, iii, and iv, Paris, 1906–27 Journal of Biblical Literature, New Haven, Conn. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London Journal of Hellenic Studies, London Journal of Roman Studies, London Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford Library of Christian Classics Loeb Classical Library

xiv LSJ LXX NHL NPNF n.s. OCA OCP OCT ODCC 3 OECT OGI PBSR PG P. Genev. PGL P. Graec. Mag. PL P. Lond. PO P. Oxyr. P. Tebt. RechSR SBL SC SIG 3 SJT StPat TU VigChr ZNTW

Abbreviations H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised by H. S. Jones, with a supplement, Oxford, 1968 Septuagint Nag Hammadi Library Nicene and Post-Nicene Christian Fathers new series Orientalia christiana analecta, Rome Orientalia christiana periodica, Rome Oxford Classical Texts E. A. Livingstone and F. L. Cross (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd edn), Oxford, 1997 Oxford Early Christian Texts W. Dittenberger (ed.), Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, Leipzig, 1903–5 Papers of the British School at Rome, Rome J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Graeca, Paris, 1857–66 J. Nicole (ed.), Les Papyrus de Genève, Geneva, 1896, 1900 G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford, 1961–70 K. Preisendanz (ed.), Papyri Graecae Magicae, Leipzig and Berlin, 1928, 1931 J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, Paris, 1844–64 F. G. Kenyon and H. I. Bell, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, London, 1893– Patrologia Orientalis, Paris and Turnhout B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, London, 1898– B. P. Grenfell et al. (eds), Tebtunis Papyri, London and New York, 1902–38 Recherches de science religieuse, Paris Society of Biblical Literature Sources Chrétiennes, Paris W. Dittenberger (ed.), Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum (3rd edn), Leipzig, 1915–24 Scottish Journal of Theology, Edinburgh Studia Patristica, Louvain Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Berlin Vigiliae Christianae, Amsterdam Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Giessen and Berlin

1 Introduction

1. The Metaphor of Deification All the earlier patristic writers who refer to deification, although sometimes conscious of the boldness of their language, took it for granted that their readers understood what they meant. Clement of Alexandria was first to use the technical vocabulary of deification, but he did not think it necessary to explain it. No formal definition of deification occurs until the sixth century, when Dionysius the Areopagite declares: ‘Deification (θωσι) is the attaining of likeness to God and union with him so far as is possible’ (EH 1. 3, PG 3. 376a). Only in the seventh century does Maximus the Confessor discuss deification as a theological topic in its own right. The reason for this is that deification language is most often used metaphorically.1 The implications of the metaphor were clear to its first hearers or readers and did not need to be spelled out, the context of the utterance enabling them to construe its meaning. But by the sixth century the metaphorical sense was fading. Deification was becoming a technical term susceptible of definition.2 That is to say, the same truth which was originally expressed in metaphorical language came in the early Byzantine period to be expressed conceptually and dogmatically. The subject of this book is Christian deification from its birth as a metaphor to its maturity as a spiritual doctrine. The early Fathers use deification language in one of three ways, nominally, analogically, or metaphorically. The first two uses are straightforward. The nominal interprets the biblical application of the word ‘gods’ to human beings simply as a title of honour. The analogical ‘stretches’ the nominal: Moses was a god to Pharaoh as a wise man is a god to a fool; or men become sons and gods ‘by grace’ in relation to Christ who is Son and God ‘by nature’.3 The metaphorical use is more On the role of metaphor in theological discourse the best study is Soskice 1985. See also McFague 1983. ‘Metaphorical usages which begin their careers outside the standard lexicon may gradually become lexicalized’ (Soskice 1985: 83). 3 When attached to the word ‘gods’, the phrase ‘by grace’ (κατα` χα´ριν) functions, in Aristotelian terms, as a ‘negative addition’ (Aristotle, Poet. 21. 1457b30–32) denying the attribute of uncreatedness. It indicates that ‘gods’ is not to be taken literally. 1 2

2

Introduction

complex. It is characteristic of two distinct approaches, the ethical and the realistic. The ethical approach takes deification to be the attainment of likeness to God through ascetic and philosophical endeavour, believers reproducing some of the divine attributes in their own lives by imitation. Behind this use of the metaphor lies the model of homoiosis, or attaining likeness to God. The realistic approach assumes that human beings are in some sense transformed by deification. Behind the latter use lies the model of methexis, or participation, in God. Homoiosis and methexis are two key terms used by Plato with long and distinguished careers in later Platonic thought. Their meanings are distinct, but their spheres of reference overlap. Although the latter is the stronger term, they both seek to express the relationship between Being and becoming, between that which exists in an absolute sense and that which exists contingently. Methexis has been defined in the following way: ‘ “Participation” is the name of the “relation” which accounts for the togetherness of elements of diverse ontological type in the essential unity of a single instance. In this sense it is a real relation, one constitutive of the nexus qua nexus which arises from it’ (Bigger 1968: 7). In other words, participation occurs when an entity is defined in relation to something else. For example, a holy person is an entity distinct from holiness, but is defined as holy because he or she has a share in holiness. Without holiness there is no holy person, but the holy person has a separate existence from holiness. To say that the holy person ‘participates’ in holiness conveys a relationship which is (a) substantial, not just a matter of appearance, and (b) asymmetrical, not a relationship between equals. ‘Likeness’ is the name of another ‘relation’ which accounts for the togetherness of elements of diverse ontological type, but in a weaker, non-constitutive way, closer to analogy than to participation. Likeness occurs when two entities share a common property. For example, two holy people resemble each other because they both possess holiness. The boundaries between these distinctions, however, are not rigid. ‘Participation’ can be strong or weak depending on whether it is used properly (κυρω) or figuratively (καταχρηστικ).4 Analogy, imitation, and participation thus form a continuum rather than express radically different kinds of relationship. Furthermore, the realistic approach, which is based on the participation model, has two aspects, one ontological, the other dynamic. The ontological aspect is concerned with human nature’s transformation in principle5 by the Incarnation, the dynamic with the individual’s appropriation of this deified humanity through the 4 The best study of participation in Plato is still Bigger 1968; see also Allen 1965. The later Platonic tradition explores the mechanics of the whole system, taking in Aristotelian insights. 5 Here and elsewhere I use the expression ‘in principle’ as a convenient way of referring to God’s action in the Incarnation before the benefits accomplished by it come to be internalized by the believer through the life of faith.

Introduction

3

sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. These four basic approaches, nominal, analogical, ethical, and realistic (in both its ontological and dynamic aspects) will be used as a framework for much of what follows. 2. The Need for the Study Metaphors, as Andrew Louth has observed, ‘disclose a way of looking at the world, a way of understanding the world. If we wish to understand the way in which any of the ancients understood their world, we must pay heed to their use of metaphors’.6 But Western scholars have rarely given the metaphor of deification sympathetic attention. The tone was set by Adolf von Harnack. Towards the end of the nineteenth century he correctly identified deification as a leading theme in Irenaeus of Lyons that found ready acceptance among his contemporaries because it not only surpassed the Gnostic conception of salvation but also accorded with Christianity’s eschatological tendencies and the mystical currents of Neoplatonism. Moreover, it came close but ‘in a very peculiar way’ to Pauline theology (1896–9: ii. 240–1). But in Harnack’s view the ‘exchange formula’ encapsulating this doctrine (God became man that man might become god) was fundamentally derived from the mystery cults and was consequently to be deplored: ‘when the Christian religion was represented as the belief in the incarnation of God and as the sure hope of the deification of man, a speculation that had originally never got beyond the fringe of religious knowledge was made the central point of the system and the simple content of the Gospel was obscured’ (1896–9: ii. 10, 318). More precisely, deification presented redemption as ‘the abrogation of the natural state by a miraculous transformation of our nature’; it distinguished the supreme good from the morally good; it excluded an atonement; and it called for christological formulas which contradicted the picture of Jesus in the Gospels (1896–9: iii. 164–6). Biblical scholars today are less confident about the simplicity of the Gospel, but Harnack’s judgement on deification has endured. In 1960 Benjamin Drewery declared: ‘I must put it on record that deification is, in my view, the most serious aberration to be found not only in Origen but in the whole tradition to which he contributed, and nothing that modern defenders of αποθωσι . . . have urged has shaken in the slightest my conviction that here lies the disastrous flaw in Greek Christian thought’ (1960: 200–1). Drewery’s protest is not to be dismissed lightly. In 1975 he published a brief but well documented study of deification which may still serve as a good, if provocative, introduction. After reviewing the relevant texts, his evaluation was still negative. He considered the doctrine unbiblical and irrational, its modern 6

Louth 1983a: 19, summarizing a central idea of Giambattista Vico’s.

4

Introduction

champions being ‘guilty of pushing a paradox into the realms of the nonsensical’ (1975: 52). Drewery’s hostility is partly to be explained by the fact that he was reacting against the confident and somewhat polemical accounts of deification put forward by three Orthodox writers, Myrrha Lot-Borodine, Vladimir Lossky, and Philip Sherrard. It was Lot-Borodine who first drew the attention of Western readers to the doctrine’s centrality in the Eastern Orthodox tradition in a series of articles entitled ‘La doctrine de la “déification” dans l’Église grecque jusqu’au XIe siècle’ published in the Revue d’histoire des religions in 1932–3 and subsequently reissued with a preface by Cardinal Daniélou in 1970. Daniélou says that when he first read them, the articles had a profound effect on him: ‘They crystallized for me something for which I had been searching, a vision of man transfigured by the divine energies’ (Lot-Borodine 1970: 10). They were to exercise a powerful influence on his important work of 1944 on the mystical theology of Gregory of Nyssa. Lot-Borodine’s articles, however, had appeared without a full scholarly apparatus. In Daniélou’s words, they abounded instead ‘with something more precious’, with a profound sense of the Byzantine spiritual tradition (Lot-Borodine 1970: 11). At the same time this Byzantine interpretation of the early Greek Fathers could be seen as a weakness. Even a sympathetic reader like Daniélou could not accept an account of early patristic theology couched in the language of Gregory Palamas. This seemed to him to fall into an error mirroring that of Western scholasticism. Nor did he accept Lot-Borodine’s neat opposition between Eastern and Western theology. A similar polemical tendency is also evident in the work of Vladimir Lossky, who has perhaps done more than anybody else to explain Orthodox spirituality to a Western public. His Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Église d’Orient of 1944, translated into English in 1957, made the doctrine of deification widely known as the crowning achievement of Byzantine mystical theology. Deification is the final end of humankind, the fullness of mystical union with God, seen in terms of a participation in the divine and uncreated energies which can begin even in this life. Lossky draws a strong contrast between the dynamic theology (in the strict sense) of the East, as represented by the later Fathers and St Gregory Palamas, and the static theology of the West, as embodied in the writings of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. His polemical tone has attracted adverse comment even from fellow Orthodox. ‘As a controversialist and apologist’, John Meyendorff writes, ‘Vladimir Lossky was sometimes intransigent and harsh’ (Lossky 1963: 5). The intransigence was not all one-way. At the time, Orthodox theology was often treated by Western writers in a hostile or patronizing manner, as the writings of Martin Jugie, for example, witness. Lossky’s reaction is understandable: ‘In the present state of dogmatic difference between East and West it is essential, if one wishes to study the mystical

Introduction

5

theology of the Eastern Church, to choose between two possible standpoints. Either, to place oneself on western dogmatic ground and to examine the eastern tradition across that of the West––that is, by way of criticism–– or else to present that tradition in the light of the dogmatic attitude of the Eastern Church. This latter course is for us the only possible one’ (Lossky 1957: 12). Philip Sherrard’s influential study, The Greek East and the Latin West (1959, 2nd edn 1992) also deemed Lossky’s course the only possible one. Disenchanted with Western attitudes––‘the spiritual dereliction, not to say slump into systematic barbarity, of the modern western world’ (1992: v)–– Sherrard came to Orthodoxy in later life. Convinced that Christianity is a ‘Way of salvation’, not a system of thought, he presents the Greek theological tradition from a soteriological perspective in which man’s conscious participation in the divine ‘realizes’ his own spiritual principle with consequences for all creation (Sherrard 1992: 43–4). As with Lossky and LotBorodine, the patristic doctrine of deification is viewed from a Palamite perspective with a strong colouring, in Sherrard’s case, of Christian Platonism.7 In the meantime, the investigation of the doctrine of deification according to modern notions of impartial scientific study was advancing steadily. The first tentative survey was a brief general account by V. Ermoni, published in French in 1897. A much more thorough treatment in Russian by I. V. Popov appeared in 1906, but had little impact outside the Russianspeaking world. An ambitious attempt to cover the same ground in German was begun by Louis Baur in 1916. In the difficult conditions prevailing in Germany after the First World War, however, his monograph remained unfinished. There were only two further articles of a general nature by O. Faller (1925) and M.-J. Congar (1935), the latter responding to Lot-Borodine, before Jules Gross published his landmark study in 1938.8 Gross set out to answer Harnack. He denied that deification was an importation from Hellenism, claiming instead that it was a biblical idea in Greek dress, the equivalent of the Western doctrine of sanctifying grace (1938: vi). Inspired by Leipoldt (1923) and Faller (1925), he saw the doctrine of deification fundamentally as the re-expression by the Greek Fathers in the language of their own culture of two themes already present in the New Testament, namely, the Pauline teaching on mystical incorporation into 7 It may be mentioned that Greece at this time was dominated by an academic theological tradition that did not pay much attention to deification. The important work by Greek theologians since 1960 is discussed in Chapter 9. 5, below. 8 Appearing on the eve of the Second World War, this book, despite its importance, survives in very few copies. The welcome publication of an English translation in 2000 came too late for me to refer to, but fortunately the translator, for ease of reference, has included the page numbers of the French edition in the margins.

6

Introduction

Christ, and the Johannine idea of the incarnate Logos as the source of divine life (1938: 105–6). To prove his thesis, Gross first examines the analogues to deification in contemporary pagan culture, then discusses the beginnings of deification in the Old and New Testaments, and finally reviews the entire Greek patristic tradition from the Apologists to John Damascene. The results are impressive. For the first time all the evidence is examined in great detail, and a wealth of material adduced to prove the ubiquity of the doctrine of deification, particularly in writers of the Alexandrian tradition. But there are a number of weaknesses. First, Gross does not study the vocabulary. He treats deification as a concept that is embodied in different writers as it is transmitted from one generation to another, without looking closely at the terminology that was developed to express it. Secondly, he does not examine the questions to which the patristic discussions of deification were the answers. The doctrine is presented simply as it appears from time to time in various Fathers. Thirdly, although the different aspects of deification are not ignored, he focuses perhaps too strongly on incorruptibility and immortality: ‘All the Greek doctors insist that to participate in the divine nature is to participate in incorruptibility. In effect they often identify the terms “to deify” and “to immortalize” ’ (1938: 350). Close attention to the context of patristic discussions of deification suggests a broader range of meanings. A brief response to Gross by A.-J. Festugière was published in 1939. After the war, however, the emphasis changed. Two remarkable studies, one of Maximus the Confessor by Hans Urs von Balthasar (1941), the other the study of Gregory of Nyssa by Jean Daniélou already mentioned (1944), inspired deeper investigation of the spiritual teaching of individual Fathers. Walther Völker, after his monograph on the ideal of human perfection in Origen of 1931, resumed his work with a series of important studies of Greek spiritual writers from the second to the fourteenth century.9 Subsequently there have been a number of significant monographs specifically on the doctrine of deification in Gregory of Nazianzus (Winslow 1979), Athanasius of Alexandria (Norman 1980), Irenaeus of Lyons (de Andia 1986), Maximus the Confessor (Larchet 1996), and Cyril of Alexandria (Keating 2004). The findings of these studies have not yet been incorporated into an overview. The last general surveys of deification were undertaken in the early 1950s, the fruits of which were I.-H. Dalmais’ expert summary, which appeared in the third volume of the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (1954–7), and A. Theodorou’s fine dissertation, arranged on a systematic rather than a historical basis, which was published in Athens in 1956. While these remain 9 These are on Clement of Alexandria (1952), Gregory of Nyssa (1955), Dionysius the Areopagite (1958), Maximus the Confessor (1965), John Climacus (1968), Symeon the New Theologian (1974), and Nicholas Cabasilas (1977).

Introduction

7

very useful, there is a need for a new evaluation of deification in the light of later research. 3. Scope and Method The section Eric Osborn devotes to deification in his book, The Beginning of Christian Philosophy (1981: 111–20) is one of the liveliest of the more recent contributions to the debate. Osborn stresses the importance of method in any discussion of deification, the available methods he lists being the cultural, the polemical, the doxographical, and the problematic. The cultural method presents deification as an integral part of the Eastern Christian ethos, treating it as the expression of a homogeneous tradition with each patristic author adding his stone to the edifice. The polemical method attacks it as wrong from the standpoint that truth is univocal and any proposition which does not accord with that truth (which is to be found in one’s own tradition) must be erroneous. The doxographer simply collects the opinions of each writer. The problematic method seeks to identify the problems to which deification was the solution. Osborn considers this the only method which, with the help of the cultural and doxographical approaches, can really shed much light on deification. Indeed, ‘it is a waste of time writing on deification unless some attempt is made to elucidate the problem’ (Osborn 1981: 113). Osborn identifies an important but previously neglected aspect of deification. A problematic approach investigates the questions that arose from the need to demonstrate the rational coherence of the faith of the New Testament in language which had to take cognizance of Greek categories of thought. An early difficulty arose from the very notion of immortality. If immortality was a fundamental divine attribute––which no one disputed––in what sense did believers attain it without blurring the distinction between themselves and God? In this connection Psalm 82: 6, ‘I said, you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High’, needed to be reconciled with the biblical insistence on the transcendence of God. As solutions were suggested, these in turn gave rise to new problems. For example, after Athanasius’ successful struggle against Arianism, Origen’s account of how the soul ascended to God was no longer acceptable in its original form. The problem now became one of reconciling the ascent of the soul and its attainment of likeness to God with the profound gulf which was perceived to exist between the ‘genetic’ and ‘agenetic’ orders of reality. Another difficulty arose from the doctrine of the Incarnation. Many Fathers, particularly of the Alexandrian tradition, considered the concepts of the Incarnation of God and the deification of man to be correlative to one another. The opponents of Arianism could therefore use the doctrine of

8

Introduction

deification as an argument for the fully divine nature of Christ: human beings could be deified only if Christ was indeed God. As has often been pointed out, soteriological concerns lay behind the christological disputes of the fourth century and later. If salvation was seen in terms of an interpenetration of the human and the divine, christological doctrine needed to reflect this. Conversely, the development of christology had implications for the development of the doctrine of deification. The problematic approach, however, is not exhaustive, because deification is more than a conceptual term, the fruit simply of intellectual analysis. As a widely accepted metaphor, it had become part of tradition and had somehow to be accommodated in theological discourse. Even a writer such as Augustine, whose cast of mind was different from that of his Greek contemporaries, accepted their exegesis of Psalm 82: 6, with its sacramental implications. The Fathers were much more aware than we are today of the unity of theology and spirituality, and also of the unity of divine revelation. According to the Alexandrian exegetical tradition, the whole of Scripture at its deepest level is about the mystery of Christ––both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, not just the New with the Messianic prophecies of the Old. All of Scripture concerns the divine economy, and in ways not immediately obvious. The present study confirms Gross’s thesis that the deification metaphor has biblical roots and that during the second and third centuries it came to be expressed in the language of Hellenism. After examining the first Christian ideas about deification and their relationship to pagan and Jewish parallels, I trace how successive writers gave different meanings and connotations to deification and show how they arose according to the specific philosophical, theological, or exegetical problems they addressed. Unlike Gross, however, who concludes with John Damascene, I take my account up to Maximus the Confessor, whose teaching on deification represents the true climax of the patristic tradition. Finally, I describe briefly the concept as inherited by the Byzantine Church. I am aware of the limitations of word studies, but as the vocabulary of deification has not yet been examined in detail, I list and discuss almost every instance of θεοποιω––αποθεω––θεω and θεοποησι––αποθωσι–– θωσι in context until the end of the fourth century, together with significant examples from the fifth to the eighth centuries. Usage determines meaning. Deification’s meaning cannot be established a priori or by generalizing from a few examples. The full range of usages must be considered. Appendix 2 summarizes my lexical findings. Briefly, the Christian usage of deification terms expressing the soul’s ascent to God precedes the pagan usage rather than the other way round, as is often assumed. Heeding Osborn’s advice, I look at the problems that each writer was addressing. In what sense may human beings (on the authority of Psalm 82: 6)

Introduction

9

be called gods? How is the destiny of the Christian related to the divine economy of the Incarnation? How does the Christian philosopher (not to be outdone by his pagan rival) attain ‘likeness to God so far as possible’ (Plato, Theaet. 176b)? How is the soul’s ascent to God to be reconciled with the distinction between ‘genetic’ and ‘agenetic’, created and uncreated? How does a human being ‘participate’ in God and still remain a creature? What is the role of the sacraments and the moral life? Few writers confront all these problems simultaneously. With each author it is necessary to identify the problems he was trying to solve, and place them in their context. At the risk of over-schematization, I use my classification of the various approaches to deification as nominal, analogical, ethical, and realistic as a key for analysing the historical development of the doctrine. The earliest approaches are the nominal and the analogical, both of which are used by Philo, from whom they pass into the Christian tradition. The next is the realistic, which also, surprisingly, has Jewish antecedents. Inspired by Rabbinic exegesis, Justin Martyr laid claim to the ‘gods’ of Psalm 82: 6 for the Church, as a consequence of which Irenaeus takes it for granted that Christians may be called ‘gods’ on the authority of Scripture because they have been incorporated into Christ through baptism, thereby attaining a potential immortality. A new approach appears alongside this in Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome, who are the first to use the verb θεοποιω. The Christian philosopher may be called a ‘god’ because he has become like God through the attainment of gnosis and dispassion. By the fourth century all four approaches are well developed, with the realistic, expressed in the language of participation and relating to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, and the ethical, expressed in the language of imitation and relating to the ascetic and contemplative life, predominating. Many writers use both approaches, though the realistic is especially characteristic of the Alexandrian tradition, the ethical of the Cappadocian. The two approaches are successfully integrated by Cyril of Alexandria and, most impressively, by Maximus the Confessor. This study aims to be as comprehensive as possible within reasonable limits, which would have been exceeded if the scope of the book had not been confined to the Greek Fathers. As no mention at all of the Syriac and Latin Fathers, however, would have left the reader with an incomplete view of the role of deification in patristic thought and spirituality, a summary account of their teaching is included in Appendix 1. 4. Overview Before Constantine, Christians lived as a minority in a strongly polytheistic environment in which the deification of human beings was commonplace.

10

Introduction

Not only were there numerous temples to gods who had once been men, but in every city pride of place was given to the cult of the emperor. Deceased emperors had been deified from the time of Augustus. Since Domitian the reigning emperor was also regarded as a god. How were Christians to react? With regard to pagan religion in general, Christian intellectuals readily adopted a Euhemeristic approach. If all the gods had once been human, polytheism did not present a threat. The imperial cult was more difficult to fit into a Christian perspective. Under persecution, Christians may have been determined not to render to the emperor the worship due to God alone, but in times of peace they were more flexible. Throughout the Graeco-Roman world the imperial cult excited popular devotion. Indeed, it played a vital role in unifying society. It is no surprise that the cult survived the transition to a Christian empire by more than a century. Christians in practice could be very tolerant of it. Moreover, the deification conferred by the imperial funeral rites became available by a process of ‘democratization’ to ordinary citizens, so that by the second century ‘apotheosis’ could mean no more than solemn burial. For an approach to deification connected with the religious development of the individual, we need to turn to the mystery cults and Orphism, and ultimately to antiquity’s most noble expression of the religious instinct in the Platonic philosophical tradition. Philosophical religion was based on the conviction that the attainment of the divine was fundamentally the realization of something within oneself. A significant number of Christians could accept the aspirations of philosophical religion with very few reservations. A pupil of Origen’s, for example, could refer to the dictum ‘Know thyself’ as a sublime method ‘for attaining a kind of apotheosis’. Alongside the high philosophy practised by the educated elite, however, there was also a ‘demoticized’ version available to the students of Hermes Trismegistus. Hermetists aimed to return to God through spiritual awakening under the guidance of an experienced teacher in a manner that dispensed with the need for serious philosophical study. Christian writers do not refer to Hermetic texts until the fourth century. But the verb θεοποιω in a spiritual context is first attested in Clement of Alexandria and the Hermetic corpus more or less simultaneously. Perhaps this is not a coincidence. If we leave aside later exegesis, there is no evidence of deification in the Old Testament. But the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was the product of Rabbinic Judaism, the successor to only one of the forms of Judaism which flourished at the time when Christian convictions were taking shape. Of the other forms, the Hellenistic and Enochic were particularly influential and made fundamental contributions to the development of the doctrine of deification. A Jewish idea of blessed immortality is first encountered in Hellenistic Judaism. The author of the Book of Wisdom is the first Jewish writer to conceive of human fulfilment in terms of the destiny of the immortal soul.

Introduction

11

This approach is taken much further by Philo of Alexandria with the help of Platonism. Philo identifies four different ways in which the soul ascends to God. The first is the religious, when the soul abandons idolatry and turns to the true faith; the second is the philosophical, raising the mind from sensible to intelligible objects of contemplation; the third is the ethical, for the virtues confer immortality by making the soul like God; and the fourth is the mystical, enabling the true philosopher to go out of himself and come as close to the divine as a human being can in so far as he has become pure nous. Moses was such a man. As an embodiment of wisdom, he occupied a mediating position between God and man. But even he can be called a god only figuratively in the sense that he came to share in the divine attributes of incorporeality and immortality. Enochic Judaism is less accessible to us today but may be studied in the earlier parts of 1 Enoch and in the writings of the breakaway Essene sect that established itself at Qumran. This form of Judaism also had a doctrine of a transcendent life beyond the grave that had developed independently of Hellenism. The righteous were predestined to transcend death and be promoted to a community of life with the angels. The leader of the Qumran community was a new Moses who would lead his fellow sectaries to the fulfilment of the angelic life, which was to be identified with the life of the ‘gods’ of the psalmist’s heavenly court. This divine life could already be anticipated in the liturgical worship of Qumran. Even Rabbinic Judaism had its own version of deification. Merkabah mysticism––a spiritual approach that grew out of meditation on Ezekiel’s vision of the throne-chariot of God––offered a rich alternative, expressed in anthropomorphic terms, to the intellectualizing Platonic version of the ascent to God. Even more important, from the Christian point of view, was the Rabbinic exegesis of Psalm 82: 6. The teaching that the ‘gods’ of the psalm were those who had won immortality through the faithful observance of the Torah was, in its Christian form, to exercise a decisive influence on the development of the doctrine of deification. Did Paul have an idea of deification? He uses various expressions for participatory union––‘in Christ’, ‘with Christ’, ‘Christ in us’, ‘sons of God’, and so on, but does not isolate ‘participation’ for special consideration. Moreover, these expressions are images. ‘Deification’ as a technical term only emerged later when Paul’s metaphorical images were re-expressed in conceptual language. The same may be said with regard to the Johannine writings, which reveal an approach to participatory union with Christ not unlike that of Paul. Among Christian authors contemporary with the last New Testament writers, only Ignatius of Antioch takes up the theme of participatory union. He does not use the terminology of deification but prepares the way for it by speaking of Christ as God. If participation in Christ is participation in God,

12

Introduction

it will not be long before the Christian who is christified will be said to be deified. The earliest explicit discussion of deification in a Christian writer arose from a consideration of Psalm 82: 6. Who is it that Scripture is addressing as gods? In around 160 Justin Martyr, drawing on the Rabbinic exegesis already mentioned, put forward the view that as the people of Christ were the new Israel, the gods were those who were obedient to Christ. Justin’s younger contemporary, Irenaeus of Lyons, went on to draw out the implications of the conjunction of ‘gods’ with ‘sons’ and claim that the gods were the baptized. Through baptism they had recovered their lost likeness to God and therefore had come to participate in the divine life which that likeness entailed. God had come to dwell within them, making them sons of God and gods. This status was not secure, for it was vulnerable to loss through sin––we are gods but can die like men, according to the next verse of the Psalm––but nevertheless the fundamental transition from death to life, from mortality to immortality, had been made, enabling the baptized to be called ‘gods’. Towards the end of the century Clement of Alexandria also taught that the gods are those whom God has adopted through baptism. But alongside this he brought in a new philosophical dimension. The ‘gods’ are at the same time those ‘who have detached themselves as far as possible from everything human’ (Strom. 2. 125. 5). Through mastery of the passions and the contemplation of intelligibles they have transcended their corporeal state and come to participate in the divine attributes themselves. Clement links these two approaches, the ecclesiastical and the philosophical, through his teaching on the attainment of the divine likeness, which, although requiring intellectual effort, is at its deepest level ‘the restoration to perfect adoption through the Son’ (Strom. 2. 134. 2). Origen was also interested in the philosophical ascent of the soul to God but in a different way from Clement. Deification for him was not the perfection of the Christian Gnostic through ethical purification but the participation of the rational creature, through the operation of the Son and the Holy Spirit, in a dynamic divinity that derives ultimately from the Father. His emphasis was less on ethics, though it was by no means neglected, than on the nature of the dynamic relationship which connects the contingent with the self-existent. Life, goodness, and immortality are attributes which do not originate in the contingent order but belong properly to the Father alone. The rational creature is deified as these attributes are progressively communicated to it through its responding to the active reachingout of the second and third Persons of the Trinity. Athanasius took this aspect of the dynamic participation in God further. But because his approach to God was more apophatic than that of Origen, it was only possible in his view for human beings to participate directly in the deified flesh of the incarnate Logos. Through participation in the body of Christ

Introduction

13

believers participate in the divinity with which that body was endowed, which leads them to participate in incorruption and immortality, and ultimately in the resurrected life and eschatological fulfilment of heaven. The Cappadocians took the doctrine of deification from the Alexandrians and adapted it to a Platonizing understanding of Christianity as the attainment of likeness to God so far as was possible for human nature. Only the body of Christ, the ensouled flesh which the Logos assumed, is deified in the sense of being ‘mingled’ with the divine. Human beings are not deified in accordance with a realistic approach, the emphasis being as much on the ascent of the soul to God as on the transformation of the believer through baptism. This is because of the centrality of the concept of imitation: Christianity is essentially the imitation of the incarnate life of Christ, who deified the body which he assumed in order to enable us to return to the likeness we have lost. But such imitation is not simply external. Although it consists largely in overcoming the passions and freeing the soul from the constraints of corporeal life, it is also a putting on of Christ in baptism. We imitate God through the practice of virtue; we also imitate him by clothing ourselves in Christ. But we can never become gods in the proper sense; that is to say, we can never bridge the gap between the contingent and the self-existent orders of reality. For the Cappadocians, deification never went beyond a figure of speech. Gregory of Nazianzus made extensive use of it in his discussion of the Christian life. Gregory of Nyssa, by contrast, while accepting it in the case of the physical body of Christ and, by extension, of the bread of the Eucharist, was unwilling to apply it to the believer. The fifth century marks the beginning of new developments. The Alexandrian theological tradition came to full maturity with Cyril, who developed his ideas on deification in the context of his polemics against Judaism, Apollinarianism, and Nestorianism. The technical terminology of deification became problematic for him even before his struggle with Nestorius. He uses it in those of his early works that are heavily influenced by Athanasius but subsequently drops it. In its place ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1: 4) comes to the fore for the first time. This Petrine phrase, used previously (but very sparingly) only by Origen, Athanasius, and Theophilus of Alexandria is quoted or alluded to by Cyril with great frequency. In Cyril’s usage physis, or nature, seems to have a more dynamic sense than ousia, or substance, representing not the divine essence but that aspect of the divine which is communicable to humanity. Accordingly, the deification of human beings is seen less in terms of an Athanasian transformation of the flesh than as a recovery of the divine likeness in our inner life. In Cyril’s scheme, in which the moral life and the reception of the sacraments are well integrated for the first time, participation in the divine nature implies our regaining of the divine image or likeness, which in turn finds expression in our sanctification, our filiation, and our attainment of incorruptibility.

14

Introduction

Deification entered the Byzantine tradition, however, not through Cyril but through Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. Theosis for Dionysius was primarily the attaining of unity and likeness. In his treatment of deification he took his language and his conceptions from both Gregory of Nazianzus and the Neoplatonist Proclus, combining Gregory’s ascent of the soul with Proclus’ thrust towards unity. Deification is the condition of the saved, which begins with baptism and is nurtured by participation in the holy synaxis, by reception of the Eucharist, by opening the mind to divine illumination. For Maximus it was not the problem of oneness and multiplicity that was central, but how a mortal human being can participate in a transcendent God. He took up the Gregorian and Dionysian approach but supplied a major corrective, for Dionysius has little to say about the Incarnation. In Maximus God is operative in the world through his divine energies. By virtue of the Incarnation the believer can participate in these. Theosis is God’s gift of himself through his energies. On analogy with Maximus’ christology, in the believer the human and the divine interpenetrate without confusion. The eschatological fulfilment of this deification is summed up in the following definition: ‘Theosis, briefly, is the encompassing and fulfilment of all times and ages, and of all that exists in either’ (Var. Cent. 4. 19; trans. Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware). In summary, until the end of the fourth century the metaphor of deification develops along two distinct lines: on the one hand, the transformation of humanity in principle as a consequence of the Incarnation; on the other, the ascent of the soul through the practice of virtue. The former, broadly characteristic of Justin, Irenaeus, Origen, and Athanasius, is based on St Paul’s teaching on incorporation into Christ through baptism and implies a realistic approach to deification. The latter, typical of Clement and the Cappadocians, is fundamentally Platonic and implies a philosophical or ethical approach. By the end of the fourth century the realistic and philosophical strands begin to converge. In Cyril the realistic approach becomes more spiritualized through the use he makes of 2 Peter 1: 4; in Maximus the philosophical approach comes to be focused more on ontological concerns under the influence of his post-Chalcedonian christology. The Antiochene fathers are different. They speak of men as gods only by title or analogy. When the Antiochenes are compared with the Alexandrians, the correlation between deification and christology becomes clear, the contrast between the metaphysical union of the Alexandrians and the moral union of the Antiochenes in their christology being reflected in their respective attitudes to deification. For the Alexandrians the transformation of the flesh by the Word is mirrored in the transformation of the believer by Christ. For the Antiochenes the deliberate and willed nature of the union of the human and the divine in Christ finds its counterpart in the moral struggle that human beings need to experience before they can attain perfection. Just

Introduction

15

as without Platonism there is no philosophical approach to deification, so without a substantialist background of thought in christology there is no basis for a realistic approach. Through Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor deification became established in the Byzantine monastic tradition as the goal of the spiritual life. The two most influential teachers of this final phase, Symeon the New Theologian of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries and Gregory Palamas of the fourteenth, emphasized the experiential side of deification. The controversies in which Palamas became involved were the result of his conviction that the hesychast was transfigured both spiritually and physically by the immediate vision, in prayer, of the divine light. The distinction between the imparticipable essence of God and his participable energies was passionately defended by Palamas as the theoretical basis of a strongly realistic view of participation in the divine. In the last phase of the controversy deification as a merely nominal or analogous term was expressly excluded. It was in this form that deification was handed on to the Orthodox Church of today.

2 Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

1. The Origins of Deification When Paul and Barnabas were visiting Lystra in the province of Galatia, their healing of a man who had been a lifelong cripple provoked an enthusiastic response from the local population: ‘When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes. And the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer sacrifice with the people’ (Acts 14: 11–13). Despite the scepticism of biblical scholars, historians have detected in this story the ring of authenticity (Lane Fox 1986: 99–100). Pagans could provoke the same reaction; Apollonius of Tyana did so on several occasions, according to Philostratus (V. Apoll. 4. 31; 5. 24). The divine and human worlds were not separated by an impenetrable barrier. Ordinary people met the gods in their dreams or as apparitions in their sleep; natural disasters were unexpected visitations of divine power. If someone gave evidence of superhuman power, it was natural to assume that he must really be a god in disguise. Evidence of superhuman power could suggest a human being who had joined the gods as well as a god in human form. This is why Paul was credited with divine power in Malta when he was bitten by a viper without coming to any harm (Acts 28: 1–6) or why Apollonius of Tyana was worshipped as a god at Ephesus for having banished the plague (Philost. V. Apoll. 7. 21). The awarding of divine honours to human beings was relatively new. Originally the human recipients of cult were clearly distinguished from the gods. We know of over eighty historical persons who were worshipped in the Greek world from classical times to the Roman period (Farnell 1921: 420–6). These subjects of heroic cult were the founders of cities, soldiers killed in the wars against the Persians, statesmen, legislators, athletes, poets, and philosophers––in short, anyone who was a benefactor of his city-state

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

17

and therefore deserved the gratitude of his fellow citizens. The first to have received a specifically divine cult was Lysander, whose victories at the end of the Peloponnesian War had raised him to a position of unprecedented power (Plutarch, Lysander 18. 4; Habicht 1970: 3–6, 243–4). Divine honours were not the result of the devaluation of heroic honours, as was formerly thought. They arose through the need, as S. R. F. Price has argued, ‘to come to terms with a new kind of power’ (1984b: 29). The power exercised by the Hellenistic kings after Alexander was of a completely new order. It could no longer be accommodated within the legal and social structure of the citystate. Divine cult was rendered to the ruler on analogy with the cult rendered to the gods in order to give expression to the new relationship of power which had come to exist between the ruler and the cities. We do not need to appeal to ‘oriental influences’ to account for the voting of divine honours to their rulers by citizens of Hellenistic cities. ‘The cults of the gods were the one model that was available to them for the representation of a power on whom the city was dependent which was external and yet still Greek’ (Price 1984b: 30). The divine cult rendered to Hellenistic rulers probably inspired Euhemerus (fl. 300 bce) to suggest in his travel romance, the Sacred History, that all the gods of popular worship had once been rulers or heroes. This view was taken up by Diodorus Siculus, who explains in his World History, written in Alexandria between 60 and 30 bce, how Ouranos, the inventor of urban life, was accorded immortal honours after his death because the accurate way in which he predicted the movements of the heavenly bodies convinced his subjects that he ‘partook of the nature of the gods’ (3. 57. 2). Euhemerism attained its greatest influence in the second and third centuries. Sextus Empiricus (fl. 200 ce) says approvingly that ‘Euhemerus declared that those considered gods were certain men of power, which is why they were deified by the rest and reputed to be gods’ (Adv. Math. 9. 51). He gives the Stoic sage as an example of a man who ‘was in all respects considered a god because he never expressed a mere opinion’ (Adv. Math. 7. 423). Sextus’ Christian contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, also found Euhemerism helpful. Unlike the Apologists, he does not see why Euhemerus and other rationalists should be regarded as atheists, for even if they did not see the full truth at least they stripped away error, leaving the field clear for the one supreme God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the gods that are not the personifications of inanimate forces or qualities, he insists, had once been men (Prot. 2. 29. 1; 2. 38. 1). This is proved by the existence of their tombs, such as those of Ares, Hephaestus, and Asclepius, by the human passions characteristic of their lives, and by the relative newness of their worship. Among recently invented gods Clement lists Eros, Serapis, Demetrius, and Antinous (Prot. 3. 44. 2; 4. 48. 1–6; 4. 49. 1–2; 4. 54. 6). The many benefactors who have been accorded divine status include the Buddha,

18

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

whom the Indians ‘have honoured as a god on account of his great sanctity’ (Strom. 1. 71. 6). Clement’s lead is followed by Origen and Athanasius, who adopt the same Euhemeristic perspective.1 Clement not only accounts for pagan religion in terms of deification but is the first to speak of the deification of the Christian. G. M. Schnurr has noted in a suggestive article that Christian deification comes to the fore after Greek myth language has become secularized: ‘Without giving any ontological sanction to the old myths, which were already secularized, mythological categories can provide a descriptive shorthand for the end and goal of Christian life’ (1969: 103). In Clement’s case it was more precisely the secularization implicit in Euhemerism that enabled him to appropriate the language of deification and put it to Christian use without at the same time taking over the content of pagan religion. If those whom the pagans called gods had been men who were able to achieve immortality, at least in the popular estimation, how much better a claim to the title had perfected Christians, who enjoyed a direct relationship with the source of immortality, Jesus Christ.

2. The Ruler-Cult In the imperial period the men of power par excellence were the emperors. The emperor was the Roman paterfamilias writ large: the holders of the chief ‘secretarial’ posts were his freedmen; his subjects were his extended family over whom, like any paterfamilias, he had the power of life and death. Although in the provinces his rule was mediated by the local ordo, the notables who ran the cities as autonomous units, on occasion whole communities could feel his wrath, as Alexandria did in 215 with Caracalla or in 298 with Diocletian. On the latter occasion the emperor swore to punish the rebellious Alexandrians by plunging the city in blood up to his horse’s knees. When the animal stumbled on entering the city, the citizens in their gratitude honoured it with a statue (Bowman 1996: 45). For the inhabitants of the empire the emperor was a figure of absolute power on a colossal scale. Moreover, he was present everywhere through his portrait, to which honour had to be paid as if to the emperor in person. The office of a priest of the imperial cult was one of the most prestigious to which a local notable could aspire. And the sebasteia, the temples of the cult, occupied the most prominent sites in the cities. The ruler-cult was not simply a fiction or a formality. For his Greek-speaking subjects in particular, the emperor was a living god who stirred feelings of fear, gratitude, and devotion. 1 Origen: Hom. Jer. 5. 3, GCS iii. 33. 21; C. Cels. 4. 59, GCS i. 331. 19; Athanasius: CG 9. 34–42, Thomson 24; De Inc. 49. 4–11, Thomson 256–8.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

19

The origins of the imperial cult go back to the practices of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Since the time of the diadochoi the peoples of the Greek East had been accustomed to giving their rulers divine honours. The most extravagant of these, the honours awarded to Demetrius Poliorcetes at Athens, are also the most Greek (Scott 1928: 164–6). Demetrius was honoured as incarnate power, as present and manifest might at the service of the Athenian state. An insight into popular sentiment is provided by the ithyphallic song with which the Athenians greeted him in 290 bce when he brought home his bride Lanassa from Sicily: Other gods are either far away, or they have no ears, or they do not exist, or pay no attention to us, not in the least; but you we see before us, not made of wood or stone but real. (Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. 6. 253e)

Once Demetrius’ power began to wane, however, the Athenians turned against him and all his divine honours evaporated overnight. His divinity belonged to his role, not his person. The Ptolemaic version of the ruler-cult was similarly Greek in inspiration but was shaped in a distinctive manner by the Egyptian milieu in which it developed, that is to say, by a centrally organized ‘state church’ and the tradition of regarding the dead pharaoh as an Osiris.2 Ptolemy I did nothing more than institute a cult of Alexander. The Ptolemaic dynastic cult dates from 271 bce when images of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe were incorporated into the temple of Alexander next to the sema as the Brother and Sister Gods. On Arsinoe’s death in July 270, her statue in the form of a ram was placed in every temple in Egypt, an unprecedented distinction indicative both of the awe in which Arsinoe was held in her lifetime and of the control which Ptolemy II had acquired over temple worship. It is this remarkable development that Callimachus celebrates in his poem The Deification of Arsinoe. The cult of Arsinoe became immensely popular, helped no doubt by her assimilation to Isis and Aphrodite, and before long had spread to the Aegean islands and beyond. The state cult of the next royal couple, Ptolemy III and Berenice, the Benefactor Gods, did not follow immediately upon their accession. It seems to have been added to the cults of Alexander and the Brother and Sister Gods after Ptolemy’s victorious return from his Syrian campaign in 241 (Bevan 1927: 207–8). Three years later the Benefactor Gods, together with their recently deceased daughter Berenice, were incorporated by a formal 2 Nock 1930: 16; Cerfaux and Tondriau 1957: 209. On the Pharaonic ruler-cult see Morenz 1973: 36–41.

20

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

assembly of the entire priesthood of Egypt into all the temples of the country, as is recorded by the Canopus Decree of March 238 bce.3 This decree, which records the first dated instances of αποθωσι and κθωσι, reveals an interesting blend of Greek and Egyptian elements. The assumption that death for the princess is a transition to the gods, the ceremonies of deification to be carried out on analogy with the deification of Apis and Mnevis, and the form of the prescribed annual festival are clearly Egyptian. On the other hand, the awarding of divine honours to the rulers in gratitude for their achievements, the voting of a decree of deification by an assembly (in this case of priests rather than of citizens), the form of the decree, and the sharing of a temple with a high god are all fundamentally Greek. The Egyptian precedent was followed in Syria but developed there along rather different lines (Bikerman 1938: 256–7). Syria, unlike Egypt, had no state religion. Each autonomous city therefore honoured the sovereign in its own way. By the end of the third century a state-organized dynastic cult had been initiated by Antiochus III (Welles 1934: no. 36; Bikerman 1938: 247), but this had no relation to the municipal cults, which maintained an independent existence. In the Hellenistic period there were thus two kinds of royal cult, that of the living ruler, which was fundamentally a municipal cult by which the citizens sought to represent to themselves the majesty of the royal power, and that of the dynasty, which was initiated by the rulers themselves and sought to overcome the threats to security and stability inherent in the mortality of kings. Both these forms were to prove useful under the Roman empire. The Roman imperial cult was not simply a continuation of the Hellenistic royal cult.4 Indeed, just as the cult of Demetrius Poliorcetes had ceased when he fell from power, so the dynastic cults came to an end along with the dynasties they sustained. There is, however, a connection between the Hellenistic and Roman forms of the cult. The same motivation that had prompted the one also gave rise to the other, the Greeks adapting their traditional cults as they ‘attempted to represent to themselves first the Hellenistic kings and then the power of Rome’ (Price 1984b: 47). This power began to be experienced by the Greeks at the end of the third century bce. Their response was to award temples and cult to the goddess Roma, the people of Rome, and individual Roman officials who had impressed them with their authority and just administration.5 The cults of individuals died away in due course to be replaced by the cult of the 3 OGI 56. There are four surviving exemplars of the decree, which was set up in temple precincts in Greek, Egyptian (i.e. hieroglyphics), and demotic. The text is given in translation in Bevan 1927: 208; and Bowman 1996: 169–70. 4 For the history of the ruler-cult in the Roman empire see Nock 1928, 1930, and 1957; Charlesworth 1935 and 1939; Cerfaux and Tondriau 1957; and esp. Price 1984b. 5 The earliest was probably Marcellus, who received a cult at Syracuse in 212 bce (Cicero, Ver. 2. 51).

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

21

emperors. Julius Caesar himself took active steps to promote his cult, building a Caesareum at Alexandria and starting another at Antioch (Weinstock 1971: 296–9), and under Augustus the imperial cult rapidly acquired its permanent characteristics (Price 1984b: 53–77). After the deification of Julius Caesar by the Senate in 42 bce, Octavian, as he then was, became known as divi filius. As his power grew so did the honours accorded to him. In 30 bce, after his victory at Actium, the Senate decreed that libations should be offered to his genius. In 27 bce he received from the Senate the title of Augustus (Sebastos), which though not divine gave him the aura of divinity, and the month Sextilis was renamed after him. Moreover, the reorganization of the city into 265 wards (vici) in 12 to 7 bce enabled him to introduce his genius among the Lares compitales of each ward. But this was as far as the cult of the living ruler went in the capital. Constitutionally the position of Augustus and his successors was different from that of the Hellenistic kings. The Roman princeps was in theory the elected leading citizen of the empire. Such was Augustus’ skill in endowing his unique position with the appearance of constitutional legality that in Rome itself any of the trappings of a Hellenistic monarch, such as temples and cult, would have been out of place. On the provincial level, however, steps were taken by Augustus to foster the ruler-cult through the provincial assemblies. The oldest of these was the Assembly of the Greeks of Asia, an institution which had been inherited from the Attalids. As a consultative council which met annually, it had from Hellenistic times included among its duties the regulation of cult and the awarding of honours to benefactors. It was found to be a useful means of communication between Rome and the local population which could report on the activities of bad governors, but its religious duties soon became the most important ones. In 29 bce the assembly was entrusted with the cult of Augustus and Roma at Pergamon (Magie 1950: 447–9; Price 1984b: 56). Besides instituting a sacrifice, it also announced a prize for the person who could propose the greatest honours for the god (i.e. Augustus). Roman citizens had separate arrangements. They worshipped Roma and Divus Julius in their own temple at Ephesus (Dio Cassius, Hist. 51. 20; cf. Tacitus, Ann. 4. 37). The Greek emphasis, however, as in earlier times was on the living ruler. Other provinces that had also been Hellenistic kingdoms, such as Bithynia, also had assemblies and these too were authorized to worship Augustus in conjunction with Roma. Such an institution was too useful not to be transferred to the West. By the time of the Flavians every province with the exception of Egypt had its concilium. The native Egyptians, of course, already worshipped the emperor as their pharaoh.6 6 Reliefs portrayed the reigning emperor as pharaoh engaged in traditional Egyptian rituals. See Bowman 1996: 168–70.

22

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

On the municipal level the imperial cult was purely a matter for local initiative. An interesting insight is provided by an inscription from Mytilene which records one of the first uses of the verb θεοποιω (OGI 456; cf. Price 1980: esp. 34–5). The citizens of Mytilene were happy to assimilate Augustus as closely as possible to Zeus. They decreed that the prizes at the quadrennial games in honour of Augustus should be the same as those specified for games in honour of Zeus, and also that a monthly sacrifice should be made to Augustus at which the animals should be distinguished from those offered to Zeus only by the fact that they should be φελιοµνοι, which probably means ‘with a spot on the brow’ (i.e. with a small differentiation from animals considered suitable for sacrifice to a high god). Finally they decreed that ‘if anything more distinguished than these [honours] should be discovered in later times, the zeal and piety of the city will not fail to carry out anything that can deify him further’. There is no mistaking the profound sense of gratitude that people felt towards Augustus. While there are some elements of continuity with the past, there is a new dimension of universality. The benefits that Augustus had brought to the whole Mediterranean world merited his assimilation to Zeus himself. When Augustus died in 14 ce, the Senate voted him divine honours, declaring him a divus as they had done with Julius Caesar. This time the comet that had accompanied Caesar’s funeral could not be expected, so at the funeral an eagle was released from the pyre to represent the soul soaring to the heavens. Subsequently the eagle became a regular feature of the consecratio. The funeral was an important rite in Rome which initiated the cult of the divus.7 The Greek East, by contrast, had no special ceremony to mark an imperial funeral but focused its attention on the living ruler. Unlike the Italians, the Greeks did not distinguish between deus and divus. The divus was a theos like the living ruler. In the Latin West there was a contrast in terminology between the living emperor and a deceased predecessor, and between such a deceased predecessor and the high gods, that was absent in the East. The pattern established by Augustus proved enduring. The only significant change before the reign of Constantine was brought about by Domitian. This emperor began his reign in a constitutional way, refusing the title dominus and preferring princeps. Then in 85/6 there occurred a change of policy. From that year Domitian wished to be addressed as dominus and deus. This did not mark the onset of megalomania but was a deliberate decision to have the state fully represented in the emperor’s person. The living emperor was henceforth to be exalted and worshipped even in Rome as a focus of unity and loyalty (Scott 1936: 103–10). The characteristics of the Roman imperial cult may therefore be summed up as follows: it was popular, being not only a creation of Augustus but also a 7

On the imperial funerary ceremony and Christian attitudes towards it see MacCormack 1981: 93–144.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

23

response to initiatives from below; it was based on the traditional way the Greeks had of defining their relationship to royal power; and it aroused strong feelings of devotion. In illustration of this one may compare the ithyphallic song sung for Demetrius (quoted above) with a panegyric celebrating Diocletian’s crossing of the Alps in 291: When you were seen more closely . . . altars were lit, incense was burned. People did not invoke gods whom they knew from hearsay, but Jupiter close at hand, visible and present: they adored Hercules, not a stranger but the emperor himself. (Panegyrici Latini iii (11) 10)

Although this is the composition of a court orator, we are probably not wrong in assuming that it reflects popular feeling. Like the Athenians six centuries previously, the citizens of the Roman empire saw their ruler as the visible manifestation of divine power.

3. Jewish and Christian Attitudes to the Ruler-Cult It is commonly assumed that there was a dual attitude towards the ruler-cult, the mass of people taking it at face value, while the educated elite regarded it with a certain amount of scepticism (Bowersock 1973; Price 1984b: 114–17). The evidence for this lies in the critical comments of moralists such as Plutarch, Seneca’s satirical Apocolocyntosis, Vespasian’s wry deathbed remark, ‘Vae, puto deus fio’ (‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god’), and the absence of treatises on the significance of the cult. Such evidence, however, may be interpreted differently. Plutarch objected not to the imperial cult itself but to the grandiose titles of Hellenistic kings. Power, along with incorruption and virtue, was one of the divine characteristics in which a human being could participate. But of the three it occupied the lowest rank. It was when power went with moral attainment that a human being could most readily be described as divine. Insofar as these remarks may be applied to the imperial cult, they urge emperors to become worthy of devotion in their moral lives as well as in their exercise of power (Plutarch, Aristides 6). Seneca’s apocolocyntosis (or ‘pumpkinification’) of Claudius reflects personal malice towards the emperor rather than cynicism with regard to the imperial funerary ceremonies. Vespasian’s remark was probably an expression of modesty or may just have been a nervous joke.8 Nor is the absence of technical treatises significant, for they would only have been needed to explain the cult to outsiders. Herodian’s account of the apotheosis of emperors for a Greek readership (c.240) demonstrates this, for he dwells precisely on that aspect of 8 Suetonius (Vespasian 23. 4) takes it to have been a joke although he himself documents Vespasian’s unassuming manner and simplicity of life.

24

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

the cult which was not known in the Greek East, the solemn funeral of the deceased emperor (History 4. 2). The assumption that the educated elite formed a superior level of society with a more ‘rational’ approach to such matters as the ruler-cult is anachronistic. The educated elite were not outsiders, nor were they alienated from the imperial cult through adherence to a sceptical attitude. As Price says, we cannot determine whether the symbols of the cult evoked different responses in the educated and the uneducated, but we can say with confidence that both participated in the cult with equal enthusiasm (1984b: 116–17). Educated outsiders, on the other hand, notably Jews and Christians, may be thought to have experienced some difficulty. In fact they were able to accommodate the imperial cult with relative ease. The Jews did not find a certain degree of participation in it problematic except in times of particular stress. There were two reasons for this. First, unlike the Christians, the Jews were respected as a people with an old and venerable religion, and therefore were not coerced into offering sacrifices to the gods. Nor were they perceived to be especially disloyal, in spite of the bitter Jewish wars of the first and second centuries. Indeed, there is evidence that in the third century Jews played a prominent part in the civic life of a number of Greek cities (Lane Fox 1986: 429–30). Secondly, until the destruction of Jerusalem, animal sacrifice played an important part in Jewish religious practice, a part which was readily intelligible to the pagans and could accommodate the imperial cult up to a point. Sacrifices could be offered ‘on behalf of’ the emperor rather than directly to him. This accommodation goes back to Hellenistic Alexandria, where inscriptions have been found recording the dedications of synagogues ‘on behalf of’ the reigning Ptolemy (Fraser 1972: i. 283, 298–9). Philo’s comments on the imperial cult illustrate these points. In 39 ce he was chosen by the Jewish community of Alexandria to travel with an embassy to Rome in order to make representations against Gaius’ proposal to set up a statue of himself in the Temple at Jerusalem. The Jews had a record of assisting the spread of Roman power in the eastern Mediterranean. In keeping with this, Philo remarked in the presence of the emperor that the Jewish Temple had been the first to offer sacrifices on behalf of Gaius’ rule. He pointed out, furthermore, that since Gaius’ accession there had been two further occasions when sacrifices had been offered, once in thanksgiving for his escape from the plague, and again for victory in his German war (Leg. ad Gaium 45, 356). In the In Flaccum he stresses the lawabiding nature of the Jewish community and reports a speech in which the Jews ask the authorities how they are going to show their religious veneration for the imperial house if the synagogues are destroyed, leaving them with no place or means for paying their homage (In Flac. 49). The normal Jewish attitude was one of loyalty and accommodation. Only under pressure does

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

25

Philo insist on the merely human nature of the emperor in comparison with the one God who is ‘the Father and Maker of the world’. The apparent disloyalty of Christians, on the other hand, attracted the attention of the authorities early on. In response the Apologists took pains to explain the Christian attitude and protest their loyalty. Justin (c.150) is the first of several Christian authors to discuss the cult, but the only one to venture any criticism of the apotheosis of deceased emperors: ‘And what shall we say of the emperors who when they die among yourselves are always deemed worthy of deification (αε απαθανατζεσθαι αξιοντε) and you produce someone who swears that he has seen the cremated Caesar ascending from the pyre to heaven?’ (1 Apol. 21). Justin is here generalizing for polemical effect. Not all the emperors had been deified after death; Gaius, Nero, and Domitian had suffered damnatio. Nor, after the funeral of Augustus, did someone swear every time that he had seen the soul of the dead Caesar rise to heaven. But it is not the details he is objecting to; it is the whole notion that just because men have been emperors they could be declared by rescript to have transcended the limitations of their human status (1 Apol. 55). The emperors, insists Justin, were simply men like everyone else: ‘they died the death common to all’ (1 Apol. 18). These are bold comments but they echo contemporary, and particularly Middle Platonist, sentiments. Plutarch had rejected the bodily translation to heaven of Romulus and others because ‘this is to ascribe divinity to the mortal features of human nature as well as the divine’ (Romulus 28. 4–6). Philo, combining his Platonism with his Jewish piety, had declared with reference to Gaius’ self-deification that nothing could have been more offensive than ‘when the created and corruptible nature of man was made to appear uncreated and incorruptible by a deification which our nation judged to be the most grievous impiety, since sooner could God change into a man than man into a god’ (Leg. ad Gaium 16, 188; trans. Colson, LCL). Even a pagan historian, Justin’s younger contemporary, Dio Cassius, could assert that it was impossible for a man to become a god merely through a show of hands (History 52. 35. 5). Yet all these could admit that virtue deifies. Justin himself goes on to use απαθανατζοµαι for ‘those who have lived a holy and virtuous life close to God’, contrasting the immortality conferred by decree of the Senate with that won by virtue (1 Apol. 21). In their attitude to the living emperor the Christian Apologists follow the Jews. Justin says that they acknowledge his authority and pray for him (cf. Tit. 3: 1; 1 Tim. 2: 2) but they will not worship him: ‘We worship God alone’ (1 Apol. 17). The later Apologists repeat Justin’s views. His pupil Tatian says that he pays the taxes which the emperor imposes but he will honour him only as a human being (Orat. 4. 1; cf. 1 Pet. 2: 7). Athenagoras assures Marcus Aurelius that Christians pray for his reign, for the peaceful succession of the imperial power from father to son, and for the extension of the imperial

26

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

authority (Legat. 37. 2). Theophilus says that he will pay honour to the emperor not by worshipping him but by praying for him. The emperor is a man appointed by God and entrusted with a stewardship, but worship must be given to God alone (Ad Aut. 1. 11). Although the attitude of the early Christians was similar to that of the Jews, the newness of their sect did not entitle them to the same respect from the Roman authorities. The imperial cult, however, did not play an important role in the persecution and martyrdom of Christians (Beaujeu 1973; Millar 1973; Price 1984b: 220–2). In times of crisis arising from natural or political disasters it was the anger of the gods that was held to blame and the ‘atheism’ of Christians that was believed to have provoked it. When Christians refused to sacrifice to the gods, sacrifice to the emperor was often offered by the judge as an easy way out: ‘at least’ sacrifice to the emperor, defendants were told. The authorities simply wanted a gesture of respect for tradition and of loyalty to the emperor (Lane Fox 1986: 425–6). The imperial cult itself was not the main issue. Indeed, in the Eastern empire it survived the official adoption of Christianity with only the most essential modifications. Under Constantine temple and cult were allowed to continue provided there were no sacrifices. Theodosius finally closed the temples in 392 but the consecratio went on for much longer (Bowersock 1982; MacCormack 1981: esp. 121–32). None of these developments provoked any expressions of outrage from Christian writers. Insofar as they comment on them at all it is with a voice scarcely distinguishable from that of educated pagans. Writing in about 320, Athanasius objects to the consecratio, in a manner reminiscent of Dio Cassius as much as Justin Martyr, on the grounds that the Senate has no authority to deify when its members are merely human: ‘those who make gods should themselves be gods’ (CG 9, Thomson 27). In an oration delivered towards the end of 380 Gregory of Nazianzus apostrophizes the Christian emperors, telling them like Plutarch before him to become gods to those under them by exhibiting virtue and beneficence (Or. 36. 11; cf. Winslow 1979: 184–5). Christian intellectuals by the fourth century were no longer outsiders. 4. The ‘Democratization’ of the Ruler’s Apotheosis The ruler-cult, giving expression as it did to a popular religious sentiment, came to be very widely disseminated. It is therefore not surprising in an era of social mobility and change to find it affected by a process of ‘democratization’. What was originally reserved to the emperor and his immediate family, namely, the ascent after death to a divine destiny among the stars, came in the age of the Antonines to be appropriated by the less exalted. The earliest private deification for which we have evidence is that carried out by Cicero of his beloved daughter, Tullia (Ad Att. xii. 18. 1, 12. 1, 36. 1). Cicero

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

27

was rather self-conscious about the prominence of his daughter’s shrine on the Appian Way, but by the second century deification could be taken for granted as following upon death without any implied claim to high social status. Indeed, a number of inscriptions from the Greek cities of Asia Minor use the word αποθωσι with reference to ordinary citizens simply as an expression for solemn burial (Keil and von Premerstein 1908: 85. no. 183; Waelkens 1983: 259–307; CIG ii. 2831–2). In Egypt this process of ‘democratization’ had been going on for many centuries. In the Old Kingdom only the pharoah, by virtue of his divine office, was ranked with the gods.9 During his lifetime his role was to mediate between the divine and the human worlds; on his death he became one with Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld.10 Gradually the privilege of Osirian burial was appropriated by great officials and eventually by the population at large, at least by those who could afford it, for the required mummification and the provision of the customary funerary goods always remained expensive. By preserving the body intact as an earthly anchor for the ka (the lifeforce) and the ba (the soul) and burying it with the proper ritual even the ordinary Egyptian could be assured assimilation to Osiris, who as an ancient vegetation god had himself been raised from the dead. This development is reflected in the evolution of the mortuary texts, the magical formulae that enabled the ba to avoid judgement and achieve a satisfactory transition to the next world. In the earliest period they were incised on the chamber walls of the royal tombs and are known as Pyramid Texts. Later, when they no longer applied solely to the king, they were painted on the coffins of private persons, so becoming Coffin Texts. Finally, when Osirian burial became widespread, they were inscribed on papyrus rolls and buried with the mummy, sometimes being inserted into the wrappings themselves, turning thus into Books of the Dead. These texts refuse to accept the finality of death: ‘Rise alive,’ they proclaim, ‘you did not die; rise to life, you did not die’ (Morenz 1973: 205). Osiris long before Ptolemaic times could encompass everyone.11 Amongst the most haunting surviving artefacts of the ancient world are the mummy portraits of Roman Egypt. Something of how their subjects perceived themselves and how they conceived of the afterlife can be deduced from the fusion of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian elements in these skilfully rendered images. The clothing, the hairstyles, the techniques of portraiture are Roman, providing striking evidence of the uniformity of culture among 9 The one notable exception is Imhotep, author of wisdom literature and architect of the Stepped Pyramid of Djoser, who was raised to the pantheon at some point after his death. Evidence for his cult, however, only dates from the New Kingdom, when he was joined in the pantheon by his fellow architect and scribe, Amenhotep. The cult of both deified sages lasted well into Graeco-Roman times. See further Wildung 1977: 31–110. 10 Only outstanding kings, however, were the recipients of cult after their death (Wildung 1977: 1–30). 11 On the ‘democratization’ of Osirian burial and the widening of access to immortality see Morenz 1973: 54–5; Griffiths 1986a: 20–9.

28

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

the upper classes of the empire. A number of the mummies in which the portraits are inserted are inscribed with standard Greek funerary valedictions: ‘Farewell! Be happy!’ (Walker and Bierbrier 1997: no. 32, no. 99). But the religious context is thoroughly Egyptian. Apart from mummification itself (the rhomboid pattern of bandaging intending to recall the mummy of Osiris), the Egyptian Lord of the Underworld is often explicitly represented or invoked. A linen shroud of the Antonine period, for example, shows a young man in Hellenistic dress and pose being guided by a jackal-headed Anubis towards Osiris represented as a mummy (Walker and Bierbrier 1997: no. 105). A beautiful young woman, dressed in the fashionable style of the Trajanic period, carries an inscription across her throat in demotic: ‘Eirene, daughter of S . . . May her soul rise before Osiris-Sokar, the Great God, Lord of Abydos, for ever’ (Walker and Bierbrier 1997: no. 111). Many of the subjects of these portraits were contemporaries or near-contemporaries of Clement of Alexandria. Whether Greeks of pure descent or Hellenized native Egyptians, they bear witness to the widespread belief in Egypt amongst people of Greek culture and high social standing that after death, like the kings of the past, they would become one with Osiris.

5. The Mystery Cults Concern for the afterlife, so far as we can tell from funerary art, seems to have been particularly intense in Egypt. Elsewhere in the empire funerary art, as evidence for religious belief, should be used with caution (Veyne 1987: 232–3). Mythological motifs on sarcophagi, for example, with their scenes of voluptuous enjoyment have more to do with dispelling the fear of death than with evoking a bliss beyond the grave. And inscriptions, for all their occasional references to αποθωσι, are more concerned to proclaim the status and achievements of the deceased in this life than to make any statement about their fate in the next. A remarkable second-century verse inscription by Titus Flavius Secundus from the mausoleum of the Flavii at Cillium in Roman North Africa brings out well the ambiguities of the Roman attitude to death. Secundus is not sure if the dead still have feelings but he is confident that his father is immortal because of the rectitude of his earthly life and the fact that his mausoleum is more a temple than a memorial. From its pinnacles the dead man can continue to survey the woods and vines of his estate and enjoy the familiar skyline of the mountains.12 There can be little doubt that most people, as Clement said, ‘clinging to the world as certain seaweeds cling to the rocks of the sea’, held immortality of little account (Prot. 12 For an English translation with full references see Davies 1999: 221–4. For a general survey of Roman beliefs in the afterlife and their connection with funerary practice see Toynbee 1971.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

29

9. 71; cf. Plato, Rep. 611d). Indeed, insouciant statements such as ‘I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care’––in its Latin form, ‘non fui, fui, non sum, non curo’, often abbreviated simply to N.F.F.N.S.N.C.––were not at all uncommon (Cagnat 1914: 291; cf. Bowman 1996: 187). What, then, are we to make of the mysteries? Did they not offer to initiates from all social classes solace in this life and the hope of a blissful immortality in the next? Apart from a few autobiographical statements emanating from a tiny cultural elite, the mysteries are the nearest that we can get to a genuinely personal religion in antiquity. Yet the documentary evidence is scanty. Initiates were sworn to secrecy about everything but the preliminaries to the rites. And although profanations occurred from time to time, the vow was well kept. We have only one first-person account of an initiation, the famous narrative of Apuleius of Madaura in Book XI of the Metamorphoses, and even that does not reveal the secrets of the climax of the rite. But if the details of what occurred are not known to us, we have ample testimonies to the effects of the rites on initiates. The most celebrated of these is that of Plato, who in the Phaedrus compares the philosopher’s joy at the vision of true Being with the elation and sense of liberation that comes to the initiate at the climax of the mystery, the moment of final revelation (250bc). The mystery to which Plato was referring was that of Eleusis, the oldest and most venerated of them all. Even Socrates bathed with his sacrificial piglet in the Saronic gulf and underwent the other prescribed purifications before being initiated into the mystery in the hall at Eleusis. Many distinguished people followed him over the centuries. Cicero came (De leg. 2. 36), so did Plutarch, who speaks of the joy and confusion mixed with hope that initiates experience (De aud. poet. 47a). Eleusis retained its power to move and inspire right up to its destruction in 395 ce. Writing in the fifth century, the Neoplatonist Proclus gives us the last testimony to the effects of the rites, which he had received from the daughter of one of the last hierophants: They cause sympathy of the souls with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible to us, and divine, so that some of the initiands are stricken with panic, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods and experience divine possession. (In Remp. ii. 108. 17–30, cited by Burkert 1987: 113–14)

The experience of initiation is everything. There is no salvation from sin, no theology of death and rebirth, no higher spirituality. The emphasis is always on ‘blessedness’, an intense feeling which carries with it the hope of a better life in the next world. The other great mystery cult of the classical period, the Dionysiac, was different in many respects from the Eleusinian. It was not attached to a great sanctuary but, in the early days at least, initiation was administered by

30

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

itinerant priests and charismatics. Another difference is that it did endow initiates with a group identity, which in Italy drew hostility from outsiders with catastrophic results. In 186 bce the Roman Bacchanalia were bloodily suppressed by the Roman Senate in an action which cost 6,000 lives. Finally, it had a much more developed doctrine of the afterlife than did the other mysteries. For Bacchic views on the afterlife we have not only literary evidence but inscribed gold leaves from the fourth century bce that have been found in tombs in southern Italy, Thessaly, and Crete. The oldest, the Hipponion lamella, which was discovered in 1969, maps out the journey of the soul after death (Vermaseren 1976; Burkert 1985: 293–5). The initiate is to say to the guardians at the spring flowing from the Lake of Recollection that he is the son of the earth and the starry sky. He will then be allowed to drink and sent along a sacred way to a blessed eternity. Other similar gold leaves from Thurii in southern Italy speak of the dead person as the child of earth and heaven but really of the heavenly race alone. ‘Happy and blessed one,’ he is told, ‘a god you will be instead of a mortal’ (Zuntz 1971: 301. 8). The overcoming of mortality was also characteristic of Orphism. It has been disputed whether Orphism was any more than a collection of writings attributed to a mythological singer (Linforth 1941: 291–9). Certainly with the appearance of Orphica literacy became important for the first time. And this new form of transmission gave rise to a new kind of authority, that of the written text. Plato mentions itinerant priests who ‘produce a bushel of books of Musaeus and Orpheus’ (Rep. 364e), which, like medieval pedlars of indulgences, they use to carry out rites for the remission of sins and the deliverance from evils in the next life. Modern scholarship, encouraged by the texts discovered on the gold leaves, is more inclined to see Orphism as a unified spiritual movement akin to that of the Pythagoreans. At its centre lay a distinctive anthropology. The human race was created from the ashes of the Titans, who had been destroyed by Zeus because they had devoured Dionysus, the Divine Child. As a result of its creation from matter that was at once both Dionysian and Titanic, human nature had a dual character. The Titanic element was the body (σµα) or prison (σµα) of the soul. The Dionysian element was the soul, the divine spark or δαµων trapped in the body until it could be released through a life of asceticism and purification, or rather, through several lives, for only thus could the soul realize its true divinity and mount upwards never to return. The Orphics were not an organized cult, but their honouring of Orpheus, the singer of hymns and rescuer of Dionysus’ mother Eurydice from the Underworld, and their belief in the divine destiny of their immortal δαµωνε gave them a distinct group identity. The ‘Pythagoreans’ as described by Plato were a similar group distinguished by their devotion to Apollo rather than Dionysus, but holding the same views on immortality and the transmigration of the soul. Unlike the Orphics the Pythagoreans were

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

31

founded by a historical figure whom later generations revered as a ‘divine man’ (θεο αν!ρ).13 Pythagoras was a charismatic figure, a philosopher with shamanistic powers who left behind him a reputation as a wonderworker. His belief in metempsychosis is well-attested (Xenophanes, fr. 7; Heraclitus, frs. 40, 129; Empedocles, fr. 129; Ion of Chios, fr. 4; Herodotus, Hist. 4. 95) as is his learning and cultivation of Apolline purity. These beliefs and pursuits were characteristic of the religious society that Pythagoras established at Croton in southern Italy, a society dedicated to the practice of an ascetic way of life (which included abstinence from meat) and to the pursuit of an esoteric study of nature with the aim ultimately of escaping from the cycle of rebirth. Like the Bacchic groups in Italy, however, it provoked hostility and was eventually ruthlessly suppressed. A notable figure in the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition was Empedocles of Acragas in Sicily, who in his work entitled On Nature14 proclaimed to his fellow-citizens: ‘I go about among you as an immortal god, now no longer mortal, honoured by all as is fitting, crowned with fillets and luxuriant garlands’ (fr. 102 [112]).15 Evidently in Empedocles’ view his soul had arrived at the last of its embodied lives. After death it would return no more to the ‘roofed-over cave’ (fr. 115 [120]) of this world as ‘an exile from the gods and a wanderer’ (fr. 107 [115]) but enjoy immortality for ever in the abodes of the blessed. It was Plato, however, who gave this tradition its definitive expression (Claus 1981: 183). In his hands the idea of the soul as the essential self that can exist independently of the body (Laws 12. 959b) rapidly reached its full development with profound consequences not only for the Platonic philosophical tradition but also for Judaism and Christianity. Pythagorean metempsychosis serves to underline the soul’s independent existence. It is striking that in two of Plato’s more important discussions of the soul the mysteries are mentioned as paradigms of the soul’s primeval vision of blessedness when it was still free of the prison-house of the body (Phaedo 81a; Phaedr. 250b). All human souls have experienced that vision at one time or else they would have descended not into human bodies but into some lower form of animal life. The philosopher’s soul alone, however, is able to recover that vision, to reverse the effects of the fall and flee to a realm which, like itself, is divine and immortal never to return. In imperial times Pythagoreanism was revived as a mystical and ascetical 13 The term is applied to Pythagoras by his Neoplatonist biographer, Iamblichus. Pythagoras’ thaumaturgic ability was regarded as proof of his sharing in one of the chief attributes of divinity, that of power. Iamblichus himself, however, is the first philosopher ‘whom posterity conventionally rather than exceptionally referred to as “divine” ’ (Fowden 1982: 36). 14 The following fragments are still printed by Wright as belonging to the Katharmoi, but recent scholarship believes that the supposed fragments from the Katharmoi all belong to Empedocles’ main work, Peri Physeos. 15 Cf. Pythagoras, of whom Iamblichus says, ‘It is generally agreed that as a result of his exhortatory addresses he procured that no one should refer to him by his own name but that all should address him as “divine” (θεον)’ (V. Pyth. 10 [53]).

32

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

tradition within Platonism. The mysteries also benefited from the renewed interest in religion characteristic of the age. The Eleusinian continued to hold its ground, as we have seen, but newer mysteries also flourished. One of the most successful was that of Isis. We know something of the rites through the remarkable account of them given in the late second century by Apuleius of Madaura in Book XI of the Metamorphoses. Although the Metamorphoses is a work of fiction, the eleventh book is generally believed to be based on personal experience. Isis, a Hellenized Egyptian deity, was a saviour goddess who had delivered her consort Osiris from the underworld and could similarly deliver her devotees once they had been initiated into her mysteries. At the climax of the rites the hero, Lucius, baptized and fasting, is led to the innermost part of the temple of Isis, where on the appointed holy night he says he ‘saw the sun flashing with bright effulgence’ and ‘approached close to the gods above and the gods below and worshipped them face to face’ (ch. 23, trans. Griffiths). After the rites are over, Lucius is given special robes and presented to the crowd outside in the guise of an Osiris, wearing ‘a crown of gleaming palm’ with the leaves pointing outwards like rays. To the onlookers he appears ‘adorned like the sun and set up in the manner of a divine statue’ (ch. 24, trans. Griffiths). The identification with the god, even if temporary, is complete. Thereafter he will carry with him the promise of a blissful union with Isis after death (Griffiths 1986b: 46–59). The cult of Isis was widespread throughout the Mediterranean world. Another new cult that enjoyed a following in the Roman period was that of Mithras (Burkert 1987: 84–7; Martin 1987: 113–18). This, too, had an Eastern, syncretistic origin, but in this case Iranian rather than Egyptian. With its cult of deus invictus it appealed especially to soldiers. In fact it was entirely masculine. No women were admitted, nor were there itinerant priests or thiasoi or temples, as with the other mysteries. Groups of men met in windowless chapels––‘caves’ they were called, although the imagery of Mithraic myth is astral rather than chthonic––where their worship seems to have aimed at a transcending of the world. There were seven grades of initiation, corresponding to an ascent through the seven planetary spheres. The goal of the worshipper was to become one with the cosmos. ‘I alone’, says a fragment of a Mithraic liturgy, ‘may ascend into heaven as an enquirer and behold the universe’ (P. Graec. Mag. iv. 434–5, cited by Martin 1987: 118). Perhaps the most remarkable of these new cults was that of Antinous (Lambert 1984: esp. 177–97). In 130 ce during an imperial visit to Egypt the young eromenos of the Emperor Hadrian was drowned in the Nile, either by accident or, perhaps, as was popularly believed, as a voluntary sacrifice to restore the emperor to health and avert evil to the empire. Hadrian was inconsolable after the death of his beloved. He lingered in Egypt while the body of Antinous was prepared for Osirian burial. In October 130 he founded the city of Antinoopolis in his honour and instituted annual games.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

33

Without promulgating any official decrees, he immediately set about promoting the cult of Antinous-Osiris in Egypt and throughout the empire. In the eight years until his death the cult grew rapidly. Temples were constructed, notably at Antinoopolis, the chief centre of the cult, at Bithynion, Antinous’ birthplace, and at Mantinea, Bithynion’s mother city. Mysteries were organized at Antinoopolis and Bithynion. Coins, medallions, and domestic busts were produced in large numbers. Plaques were manufactured for fixing to coffins. In spite of his origins, or rather, because he had died for love, Antinous became the god of triumph over death, as a number of dedications witness (Lambert 1984: 191–2). In Egypt he was enthroned in the temples with the other gods in the manner initiated by the enthronement of Arsinoe three and a half centuries earlier. Elsewhere he was assimilated to Hermes or Dionysus. The high-minded might censure the cult, but popular devotion endowed the worship of Antinous with a real vitality: having conquered death himself he offered to others the prospect of eternal life. The ‘sacred nights’ of Antinous that were celebrated at Antinoopolis very soon became notorious (Clem. Alex. Prot. 4. 43). Other mysteries, however, were much more sedate. The Dionysiac, which in the imperial period was reestablished in Italy, had very little to do with the ecstatic orgia represented by Euripides, the details of which in any case are more literary than historical. The later mystery drew on the aspect of Dionysus as a god connected with the Underworld that was prominent among the Orphics. But the surviving evidence does not convey the impression of an intense Orphic spirituality. An inscription of 176 ce, for example, gives us a detailed account of a meeting of an Athenian Bacchic society called the Iobacchi (SIG 3 1109, discussed by Lane Fox 1986: 85–8). The inscription lays down rules of conduct and procedure at meetings rather than express the religious aims of the society. Members were to elect various officers, pay subscriptions for the wine consumed at monthly meetings, and discipline those who behaved badly or did not attend. Yet the religious side was also present. There were theological speeches, ceremonies honouring the presence of Dionysus, and the choosing by lot of a member as ‘Dionysus’. But whether this indicates an identification with the god we do not know. The Christian attitude to the mysteries was one of disgust and contempt. The most detailed denunciation of them, Clement of Alexandria’s (Prot. 2. 11–19), holds nothing back in condemning them as savage, obscene, and deceitful. And yet in his peroration to the Protrepticus Clement clothes the true mysteries of the Logos in the very imagery of their pagan counterpart: O truly sacred mysteries! O pure light! In the blaze of the torches I have a vision of heaven and of God.16 I become holy by initiation. The Lord reveals the mysteries; he 16 δ"δου´χουµαι του` ουρανου` κα τ#ν θε#ν ποπτεσαι. These are technical terms of initiation into the mysteries. ∆"δου´χουµαι is to be illuminated, and alludes to δ"δοχο (lit: ‘torch-bearer’) the holder of a hereditary office at Eleusis. Ε  ποπτευ´ω is to be admitted to the highest grade of the mysteries.

34

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

marks the worshipper with his seal, gives light to guide his way, and commends him, when he has believed, to the Father’s care, where he is guarded for ages to come. These are the revels of my mysteries! If you will, be initiated too, and you shall dance with angels around the unbegotten and imperishable and only true God, the Logos of God joining with us in our hymn of praise. (Prot. 12. 93, trans. Butterworth)

Clement woos his audience, capitalizing on the longing for illumination and assurance that the mysteries sought to satisfy and trumping the pagan version with his own images of joy and self-forgetful union with God. We shall observe a similar desire to go one better than paganism in his use of the vocabulary of deification. 6. Philosophical Religion By imperial times many of the mysteries had become ‘socially acceptable and legally recognized religious clubs that required membership and functioned in accordance with laws governing spiritual meetings’ (Filoramo 1990: 27–8). For an expression of a more intense quest for union with the divine we must turn to the small groups that in the second and third centuries gathered round charismatic spiritual teachers (Fowden 1982; Brown 1988: 103–5). These teachers were leaders of didaskaleia, or study circles, dedicated to the deepening of spiritual life through intellectual enquiry. They could be Platonists or Christians or Gnostics or Hermetists but they had a number of things in common. One was the intense devotion they inspired in their disciples. Towards the end of the second century Clement, for example, made a number of journeys to different centres of learning before arriving in about 180 at Alexandria and discovering in Pantaenus an inspired lecturer ‘who engendered in the souls of his hearers a deathless element of knowledge’ (Strom. 1. 1. 11). Some fifty years later in the same city Plotinus experienced a similar elation when he was directed to the lectures of Ammonius Saccas after having been bitterly disappointed by other philosophers. ‘This is the man I was looking for,’ he exclaimed and spent the next eleven years studying with him. While Plotinus was attending lectures at Alexandria, Origen, who had also studied with Ammonius Saccas, was conducting similar classes at Caesarea in Palestine. One of his students, Gregory Thaumaturgus, has left us an account in a panegyric delivered in 238 of what it was like to sit at Origen’s feet. To him Origen was ‘the pattern of the wise man’, or rather, ‘one who vehemently desires to imitate the perfect pattern’ (Pan. 11, PG 10. 1081d–1084a). He taught his students in the early stages of his course of studies how to put into practice the precept ‘Know thyself’. By looking into their souls they may see reflected there an image of the divine mind, which Gregory, as already noted, describes as a sublime method ‘for attaining a kind of apotheosis’ (1084c).

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

35

Six years after the delivery of this panegyric Plotinus, ‘the philosopher of our times’ (V. Plot. 1), arrived in Rome, where he began to hold classes attended by a learned circle that included a number of medical men and members of the Senate. Among those who came, ‘fired by a real enthusiasm for philosophy’ (V. Plot. 7), was Porphyry, who studied with Plotinus for six years and became his biographer and literary executor. He describes Plotinus at work, sweating gently with concentration, answering questions courteously and never losing his patience or train of thought in spite of the fact that Porphyry once questioned him relentlessly for three days––to the annoyance of other members of the group––on the soul’s relationship with the body (V. Plot. 13). The fruits of these lectures and discussions were formally set out in the treatises arranged and edited by Porphyry. Plotinus’ interests were almost entirely metaphysical: they were centred on the nature of ultimate reality and on how the soul was to come into contact with it. In this as in all things his supreme authority was Plato. But Plato himself discusses problems rather than provide solutions. The Platonism which Plotinus inherited had undergone a long period of systematization and development under Stoic, Peripatetic, and Neopythagorean influences. One of the key figures in the revival of Platonism in the first century bce was Eudorus of Alexandria. It was he who established ‘likeness to God’ as the telos of human life for all the Platonists who came after him. Previously the Stoic ‘conformity to nature’ had prevailed in the Academy. Eudorus’ formula, from the Theaetetus (176b), marks a return to Plato and the adoption of a more spiritual perspective. In Middle Platonism it becomes a central concern but its meaning is not immediately evident. What is the nature of the God whom we are to resemble? What aspect of us can become like him? And how can we achieve this? Let us take each of these questions in turn. As commentators have often pointed out, the English word ‘god’ does not adequately express the Greek theos. Without the article theos means ‘a god’, or used as a predicate it can simply mean ‘divine’, ‘more than human’ (Jones 1913; Skemp 1973; Grube 1980: 150–1). On the philosophical level the divine was equivalent to true ‘being’ (Kenney 1991: xvii–xviii, 3–32). We are accustomed to thinking of ‘being’ in terms of existence: something either exists or does not exist. But for the Greeks ‘being’ was contextual. Things did not just exist; they existed in a particular way. ‘Being’ was thus bound up with evaluative judgements, which enabled the Greeks to conceive of degrees of being or degrees of reality. That which was most real was divine in an absolute sense. Conversely, whatever was deficient in ‘being’ (i.e. was on a lower level of reality) was in certain respects deficient in divinity. In Plato’s thought the highest level of reality (and therefore of divinity) was occupied by the Forms, ‘the immutable divine paradigms of order and value’ (Kenney

36

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

1991: 22). In the mature dialogues the One of the Parmenides or the Form of the Good of the Republic are especially representative of this transcendent aspect of the divine which is the ultimate cause of all lesser degrees of being, not through any kind of activity but by exemplifying their quality or value. Below them the dynamic or cosmogonic aspect of God is represented mythologically by the demiurge of the Timaeus. And below him come the gods of cultic polytheism. In the earlier dialogues Plato portrays them in a conventional way as manifestations of powers that are more than human. But in the Euthyphro he establishes that the gods are not free to do as they will but must conform to a higher moral reality. This hierarchical arrangement of the divine in Plato’s writings was to be fundamental for later Platonic theology. Aristotle’s concept of God is fundamentally that of Plato, though by discarding the doctrine of Forms and the Platonic mythology Aristotle is able to give a more coherent and systematic account of God. In Metaphysics xii. 6–7 God is described as immaterial, eternal substance whose only activity is a direct intuitive knowledge not of anything external, because that would imply change, but of himself. His dynamic aspect is represented by his role as the unmoved mover and first cause, a role which he exercises solely by being the supreme object of desire, for any physical causation would involve a change in him through being acted upon by the moved. Yet he is not thereby reduced to a dry abstraction. Aristotle represents him as a perfect, living and intelligent being (1072b26–30). Below God in this absolute sense are the heavenly bodies, the ‘moved movers’, which are also alive and divine. And below them on a descending scale are the gods, human beings, animals, and plants, though divine intelligence does not extend below the human level. With the revival of Platonism in the Roman empire, the emphasis, which through Stoic influence had moved to a monistic pantheism, was again placed on a transcendent God who was the unmoved source of the stability and order of all that existed. This transcendent God clearly owed something to Aristotle’s criticism. In a typical representative of early Middle Platonism such as Plutarch of Chaeronea, the Forms and the demiurge are brought together to make a supreme intellective principle, the ‘really real’ (τ# &ντω &ν), whose intellection is the divine Forms. Thus the primary divine principle is not only a self-orientated mind but is a paradigm for the world of ‘becoming’ whose effect is felt on lower levels of reality as ‘the object of striving for all Nature’ (Dillon 1996: 199–202; Kenney 1991: 43–54). Under the stimulus of Neopythagorean dualism a further important development took place which is associated particularly with Numenius of Apamea, who through Ammonius Saccas exercised an influence on Plotinus. This development is characterized by the demotion of the demiurge, who because of his contact with recalcitrant matter had to be separated from the first principle of the cosmos. The first principle is a nous engaged in self-

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

37

intellection, the content of which is the Forms. It is, indeed, the totality of the Forms, ‘being’ in itself, which may be thought of as a mind to which the whole of reality is simultaneously present. The second principle is also nous but its intellection is extrinsic. It is directed ‘upwards’ as it contemplates the first principle, and ‘downwards’ as it exercises its demiurgic function. The latter causes it to be divided into the second and third gods, the further division being made because matter is now the Pythagorean dyad. By coming into contact with the dyad, the demiurge endows it with unity but is himself divided on account of the instability of matter. Numenius thus proposes a triad of gods: the One, the demiurge as an intellective principle, and the demiurge as a cosmogonic principle. There is no discontinuity in these three gods. They are simply modes of divine being as the deity unfolds progressively down the scale of reality (Dillon 1996: 366–72; Kenney 1991: 59–74). With Plotinus the final step is taken of placing the first principle, the One, actually beyond ‘being’ and intellection as the inexhaustible source of life on which all finite things depend for their existence. The second hypostasis, the intellective principle (nous), emerges out of the first without changing or affecting it in any way, the One producing it only because perfection is necessarily productive. The third hypostasis, an inferior but still rational principle (psyche), emerges from the second as the second does from the first. At its lowest level psyche becomes Nature, the immanent power of life and growth. All the time it seeks to turn back on its source, as the nous does upon its source. There is therefore not only a procession from the One but a movement back towards it, for these principles are not separate, hierarchically ordered divinities, but modes of the One’s disclosure at different levels of reality (Rist 1962; 1967b: 21–129; Armstrong 1970: 236–49; Wallis 1972: 47–61; Kenney 1991: 91–156). That nous and psyche are replicated within each human being is one of the fundamental tenets of later Platonism. In Plato himself we can discern a development in his understanding of the soul. In the Phaedo, the dialogue set on the last day of Socrates’ life, it is a unitary model of the soul which is discussed. Drawing on Orphic and Pythagorean ideas, Plato has Socrates present the soul as not simply a life force, which according to conventional wisdom perished upon death, but as the true self, the inner man ‘chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars’ (82e). Less metaphorically, the soul is the directing principle that controls the body and its passions (94d). Its unity is proved by its immortality, for only that which is not composite is indestructible (78c). And its immortality is proved by a series of converging arguments, notably the way learning is fundamentally recollection based on memory of a previous life (91e), the inability of the cause of life to participate in death (105de) and above all by the soul’s ability to apprehend the Forms, which makes it akin to the divine (100b). The tripartite division of the soul first appears in

38

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

the Republic and the Phaedrus. This elaboration marks a great advance on what had gone before because the passions and desires are now included within the soul, allowing for struggle and conflict within the human psyche. The famous image of the charioteer and the two horses appears in the Phaedrus (246a) as Plato explains how the intellect struggles to bring the unruly faculties of the soul into line with the more tractable ones. The whole theory is restated mythologically in the creation story of the Timaeus. There the demiurge himself does not create human beings because if they received life at his hands they ‘would be on an equality with the gods’ (41c). The creative movement initiated by the demiurge comes down to men at one remove through the gods created by him, thus ensuring that human beings are mortal. A divine element, the soul, is provided by the demiurge but the rest is the work of the gods. It is when the soul becomes incarnate in the body that it acquires its tripartite character. The noblest part is the intellect (nous), which is ‘a god to each person’ (90a), and it is the purpose of philosophy to cultivate this part, for only the nous is immortal, the incensive and appetitive parts perishing with the body (90cd). Aristotle, while despising the doctrine of reincarnation, retained the kernel of Plato’s psychology, that is to say, the immortality of at least some part of the soul. In Book II of the treatise On the Soul he sets out his position in terms of his favourite principles of matter and form, potentiality and actuality. He equates the soul with the form and the body with the matter of animals, and then goes on to define the soul as ‘the first actuality of a natural body that potentially has life’ (412a27–8). Form and actuality are different ways of saying that the soul is that which makes a living being what it is. By implication the soul would then perish with the body upon death, for body and soul form a composite whole. But Aristotle, unable to break entirely with his Platonist formation, makes an important qualification with regard to the intellect. ‘It seems’, he says, ‘that this is another kind of soul, and that this alone may be separable, as that which is eternal from that which is perishable’ (413b25–7). In Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics he speaks more confidently of the intellect as something if not absolutely divine at least the most divine element in us which makes us immortal when we strive to live in accordance with it (1177a16; 1177b27–35). Aristotle’s reinforcement of the fundamental duality of the soul in the Dialogues had repercussions for later Platonism. Alcinous, for example, in his reaction to the Stoic unitary view of spiritual reality (all human souls as ‘parts’––apospasmata––of the World Soul), separates the rational and irrational parts of the soul so strongly that they tend to become two distinct souls. The irrational part was created by the young gods, as in the Timaeus, but does not participate in nous and is not immortal. The embodiment of this composite soul is regarded as a kind of fall, the result fundamentally of a wilful desire for pleasure. Alcinous has an ambivalent view of the world

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

39

which strengthens the dualistic tendencies of Platonism. We find this ambivalence turning into downright hostility towards the world in Numenius. For him the descent of the soul is a complete disaster, for Matter exists independently of Good and is identified with Absolute Evil. Numenius represents human souls as congregating in the Milky Way before descending through the planetary spheres to earthly bodies, drawn down by the lure of pleasure. As a result of the acquisition of accretions on the way down and finally of embodiment, the rational soul now finds itself with an irrational counterpart. The human being is thus dominated not by different aspects of a single soul but by two distinct and warring souls. Plotinus, although influenced by Numenius, is much less radical in his dualism. The soul’s descent is the result of metaphysical necessity, not moral evil. Evil comes from matter after the soul’s embodiment, or rather, after the embodiment of that part of the soul which descends into the material world. Plotinus usually works with a twofold division of the soul, in which the rational level is identified with discursive reason and the irrational with sense perception, the emotions and so on. But sometimes the problems he is considering lead him to use a threefold division. In such contexts the highest level is the unfallen soul which has not descended into matter and remains in contemplation of Nous. The second level then becomes discursive reason and the third the irrational soul (Wallis 1972: 73–4). There are no sharp divisions, however. All soul forms a continuum but the different levels reflect a fact of experience. We feel drawn in different directions but we can choose on which level to live, whether the contemplative, the rational, or the irrational, and our choice assimilates us to that level and defines our identity. Eudorus, as already mentioned, had made ‘likeness to God’ the telos of human life. The relevant passage in the Theaetetus has Socrates say that because of the evils in ‘this region of our mortal nature . . . we should make all speed to take flight from this world to the other, and that means becoming like the divine so far as we can’ (176b; trans. Cornford). The phrase hitherto understood as ‘so far as we can’––κατα` τ# δυνατν––is now taken to mean ‘according to that part which is able’. It is only the higher, rational soul that can become like God and flee to the other world. The irrational soul must be trained to accept the guidance of reason and can then be ignored until it is discarded. The fullest account by a Middle Platonist of the soul’s return is given in Sulla’s myth at the end of Plutarch’s essay On the Face in the Moon (Mor. 943–4). There are in fact two deaths which human beings must undergo before they can achieve their telos. The first separates the body from the rest and takes place here on earth. The soul then ascends to the region between the earth and the moon, where ‘the unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offences’ (943c). The just arrive at the moon, where they enjoy the pleasant life of Elysium, having now become daemons. They are not entirely pure, nor is their state permanent, because they have not yet been freed from the

40

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

influence of irrationality. After further improvement the best daemons undergo a further death separating the intellect, which alone is capable of immortality, from the lower soul. With the freeing of the intellect by this second death the last vestiges of irrationality are left behind. The intellect ascends to the sun, returning to the gods, from whom it originally came, under the impulse of a yearning in which all nature shares. With Plotinus we encounter a different approach, couched in metaphysical rather than mythological terms and concentrating more on this earthly life. The beginning of the return to our source for Plotinus consists in turning inwards. ‘If you are amazed at the soul in something else,’ he says, ‘be amazed at yourself’ (Enn. v. 1. 2. 50–1). Divinity is already within us by virtue of our being ensouled: we are gods at the furthest that the divine descends from its source and archetype, the One. The first thing we must do is to purify our lower soul by stripping away everything alien to it so that it can be totally one with our higher soul, which does not need to be purified because it has not descended into the body. Purification, however, is not enough on its own: ‘Our concern . . . is not to be out of sin but to be a god’ (Enn. i. 2. 6. 2–3). The attainment of the good necessitates reaching up to the divine world where the archetype of the good is to be found. Since all soul is one ousia, or substance, there is no inherent difficulty in becoming one with psyche once the lower part of our souls has been fully subjected to the higher part. There is no sin to overcome; we simply have to decide to be guided by what is immediately prior to us. The world soul is like the higher individual soul in that it is not affected by the material world, while it differs from it in its direct control of the entire cosmos. When the individual soul becomes one with it, it shares in the direction of the universe (Enn. iv. 8. 2. 19–30). Purification prevents us from being dragged down to sub-human, and consequently sub-divine, levels. But it is contemplation that enables us to rise to the intelligible world. This is because thinking and the object of thought ultimately become the same: the human soul is assimilated to the things it contemplates as it presses on towards the nous.17 When the soul has become one with the nous, it can be said unequivocally to have become a god, for henceforth it lives on the level of the eternal (Enn. ii. 9. 9. 50–1; vi. 4. 14. 16– 22). But there still remains a further step, union with the One. This is different in kind from union with the nous, which requires in the soul a process of abstraction and purification in order to revert to its prior. This further step is described by Plotinus as requiring a leap towards the One (Enn. v. 5. 4. 8; cf. 17 The key text is Enn. iii. 8. 8. 1–9, in which Plotinus, alluding to Parmenides fr. b3dk, declares that at the end of the soul’s ascent the objects of knowledge become one with the knower, not by mere appropriation or the attaining of moral likeness (ο'κει(σει), as in the case of the outstandingly virtuous, but substantially (ουσ"), because ‘thinking and being are the same’. Cf. Siorvanes’ summary of Proclus’ theory of knowledge quoted below (p. 257).

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

41

Rist 1967b: 220). It is the ultimate stage of the soul’s journey, the final annihilation of all duality. The soul becomes one with the object of its search, and yet is not absorbed into it. This causes fear, for the soul must open itself to the infinite, and pain, for the soul loses its familiar points of orientation. The union is described as vision, but ‘vision’ is not an adequate term because it still implies duality––a seer and the seen (Enn. iii. 9. 10. 11– 13; vi. 9. 11. 4–7; cf. vi. 9. 11. 22–5). It is also described as touch, as blending, as self-surrender, as ecstasy, as erotic mingling (Enn. vi. 9. 9. 33–44 and 44–6). A striking analogy is that of the superimposed centres of two circles. The centres are then indistinguishable from each other and yet they are still seen to be two points when they move apart (Enn. vi. 9. 8. 11–16). In spite of the union with the One being a dizzy leap into the infinite – ‘the mind reels before something thus alien to all we know’ (Enn. vi. 9. 7. 1–3)––it is not a leap into anything outside ourselves. Plotinus stresses that the journey is an inward one: ‘we must ascend to the principle within ourselves’ (Enn. vi. 3. 3. 20–1); ‘when the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien, but to its very self’ (Enn. vi. 9. 11. 38–40). It is at that point, says Plotinus, that a man has become a god––but he at once corrects himself: ‘or rather, is one’ (Enn. vi. 9. 9. 58). We are already gods in our true, higher selves. We do not need to become gods but simply to realize what we are, which we attain in its fullness through union with the One: ‘for a god is what is linked to that centre’ (Enn. vi. 9. 8. 8–9; cf. Armstrong 1976). All this was not merely a matter of philosophical theory to Plotinus. The quest for union with the divine dominated his life. Porphyry testifies that on several occasions Plotinus became rapt in ecstasy in his presence: To Plotinus ‘the goal ever near was shown’: for his end and goal was to be united to, to approach the God who is over all things. Four times while I was with him he attained that goal, in an unspeakable actuality and not in potency only. (V. Plot. 23. 14–18; trans. Armstrong)

What this ‘unspeakable actuality’ felt like is described by Plotinus himself in the following words: Often I have woken up out of the body to my self and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and come to identity with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body. (Enn. iv. 8. 1. 1–11; trans. Armstrong)

The experience of going out of the body (which for Plotinus means ascending to the highest part of one’s being), of beholding an incomprehensible

42

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

beauty, of feeling deflated on returning to the body will be repeated by other Neoplatonists and not only pagans.18 That these transitory ecstasies were only a foretaste of a union with God after death was confirmed for Porphyry by the oracle uttered at Delphi in response to a question put by another member of Plotinus’ inner circle, Amelius. The soul of Plotinus, Amelius was told, having left the tomb of the body and become a daemon, had joined the company of Minos and Rhadamanthus, Plato and Pythagoras and ‘all who have set the dance of immortal love and won kinship with spirits most blessed’ (V. Plot. 22. 45–60; 23. 15–17). As long as the Platonists maintained the doctrine of the undescended soul, deification in a technical sense was not possible. A major change comes with Iamblichus, for Iamblichus could not believe in the existence of an undescended element in the human person. In his view the Plotinian notion that the higher soul always remained in the intelligible world whether we were aware of it or not contradicted not only experience but the fundamental principle (going back to Aristotle) that the nature of a substance could be inferred from its acts. He could appeal to Platonic authority for his refusal to accept the doctrine of the undescended soul, for the charioteer in the Phaedrus myth does not continue on an uninterrupted course with the gods but sometimes rises and sometimes sinks (Phaedr. 248a). Moreover, the Plotinian doctrine cannot account for the existence of sin or unhappiness. If the higher soul is unaffected by the passions, how does the free will, which belongs to the ruling faculty, come to be seduced by the images of the sensible world? And if the highest part of the soul is constantly engaged in contemplation, with the bliss of fulfilment which that activity would bring, then the whole of our being ought to enjoy uninterrupted happiness, which is not the case (Proclus, In Tim. 3. 334–5; cf. Steel 1978: 40–4). The result of Iamblichus’ criticism of the higher soul was for the first time to turn the hypostases into a hierarchical series of different essences. These essences were connected with each other by the Law of Mean Terms, which resolved all beings into unparticipated terms, participated terms, and participants.19 This law, formulated by Iamblichus himself, proved to be very influential. It enabled lower principles to be affected by higher ones and to move up the scale ‘by participation’ without compromising the transcendence of the latter.

18 The only comparable personal testimony in a Christian writer is that of Augustine, Confessions 7. 17 (23) and 9. 10 (24) (Chadwick 1991: 127, 171). But Gregory of Nyssa attributes similar experiences to David (De Virg., PG 46. 361b) and to Abraham (C. Eun. 12, PG 45. 940a–941b) (Musurillo 1961: 105, 119). Cf. also The Book of the Holy Hierotheos, discussed in Appendix 1. 19 Our informant is Proclus (In Tim. 2. 105, 240, 313), who develops this principle in a systematic way (cf. El. Theol. 23 and 24). Its purpose is to solve the problem of the relationship between the transcendent and the immanent, the Form and the particular. For discussions of the concept of participation in the later Neoplatonists see Lloyd 1982; Niarchos 1985; Siorvanes 1996: 71–86; Siorvanes 1998.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

43

Some foreshadowing of this Iamblichean development is already apparent in Plotinus’ pupil, Porphyry, who is accordingly the first Platonist to use the technical language of deification (c.300). In a letter to his wife Marcella he presents a simplified version of his view of the purpose of philosophy: He who practises wisdom practises knowledge of God, not by constantly offering prayers and sacrifices but by showing piety towards God through his deeds. For no one could become pleasing to God either through the opinions of men or through the empty words of rhetoricians. On the contrary, he makes himself pleasing to God and deifies himself ()αυτ#ν . . . κθεο) by assimilating his own condition to that which is blessed through incorruptibility. (Ad Marcellam 17)

It has rightly been pointed out that ‘in his ethical consideration Porphyry starts from the distance that separates the soul from the higher levels of being’ (Steel 1978: 32). In other words, in his ethical writings he is nearer to the Iamblichean position than to the Plotinian, as his use of κθεω in this instance suggests. Normally in Porphyry’s writings gods, daemons, and the souls of human beings are in essence the same, differing only in how much of the sensible world they control (the human soul controlling only the human body) and in the extent to which they participate in the passions. Here through practical philosophy a person is said to become like God in one of his most important attributes, that of incorruptibility, and this attainment of likeness is said to deify him. With Iamblichus, Porphyry’s pupil, the conditions that make deification in the proper sense possible become firmly established. As long as the human soul is considered to be part of the same essence as that of the gods in whole or in part, the realization of the human telos consists in waking up to what we really are: transcendent beings trapped in the world of sense. But once the notion of the undescended soul has been rejected and the soul of a human being is conceived of as essentially different from that of a god, some ontological transformation is needed before the soul can ascend to the divine life. This transformation is the result of theurgy, a concept which entered into Platonism from the Chaldean Oracles. ‘Doing philosophy’ could no longer in itself raise the soul to the level of the divine because the divine essence transcends the essence of the human soul to such a degree. It is therefore necessary for the divine to descend by a ‘providential love’ before the lower reality can be perfected through participation in the characteristics of the higher. Iamblichus speaks of theurgy as taking place through wordless symbols beyond the act of thinking. But his insistence on theurgy is accompanied by an extension of the term to cover intellectual activity as well as ritual. While we are still unpurified and weighed down by the body we still need material ritual; but this does not mean that all embodied souls need it. The few more perfect souls practise an intellectual and incorporeal kind of theurgy. It was the transformation wrought by theurgy, by ‘the power of the

44

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

wordless symbols intelligible to the gods alone’, that enabled Pythagoras, for example, ‘to be deified in a way surpassing human understanding’ (V. Pyth. 23. 103). These are almost the only instances of the use of the terminology of deification in philosophical writings before the fifth century (cf. also De Myst. 10. 5). It is only with Proclus that we meet with it frequently. Proclus’ chief concern is to clarify the relationship between self-existent reality and the material world. Self-existent reality is ‘that which is beyond all things and to which all things aspire’ (El. Theol. 113). It is ‘the One’, ‘the Good’, or simply ‘God’. The character of divinity is unity. Only the One possesses unity without any privations or contradictions. But unity can be shared. The participable ‘ones’ are the henads. Every entity in the world possesses unity in the manner appropriate to it through its relationship with its headprinciple, or henad. Thus: Every divine body is such through the mediation of a deified soul, every divine soul through a divine intellect, and every divine intellect by participation in a divine henad; the henad is natively (αυτθεν) a god, the intellect most divine, the soul divine, and the body deisimilar. (El. Theol. 129; trans. Dodds, modified)

Deification in this late development is central to an understanding of how God is simultaneously detached from and present in the world. Proclus does not separate the One’s ineffable aspect from its causal aspect. As Siorvanes has put it, God is both apophatic and the first positive term of existence. The principle of deification explains how this can be so (Siorvanes 1998, esp. 16–18). 7. The Egyptian Hermetists In the new spiritual climate of the second and third centuries the intimate contact with the One God that could be attained by members of a cultural elite after years of rigorous intellectual training was not going to be confined to the tiny minority that had the necessary wealth and education to qualify for membership. There was a demand for such teaching amongst the many merchants, artisans, and government officials who thronged the major cities of the empire and to cater for their needs there was a new class of men–– ‘orators, lecturers, teachers who constitute a sort of turbulent, lively intellectual proletariat’.20 Among these ‘new men’ were the teachers of Gnosis. Thanks to the polemics of their ecclesiastical adversaries brief details have come down to us of the leading Christian Gnostic teachers. Nothing is 20 Filoramo 1990: 36. This new class, of course, only constituted a proletariat from the supreme vantage point of the intellectual elite. For the social context of Gnosticism see Filoramo 1990: 34–7, 173–8, and for that of Hermetism, Fowden 1993: 186–95.

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

45

known, however, of their pagan counterparts other than what we can deduce from their writings. These have survived in two forms, the philosophical, which are concerned with theology and the fate of the soul, and the technical, which are magical texts. The philosophical collection known as the Hermetic Corpus was probably made in late antiquity, although our earliest attestation is from the eleventh century and in its present form is a selection probably reflecting the tastes of its Byzantine compiler. The technical texts, which can seem bizarre to the modern eye, are not likely to have been considered different in kind by the Egyptian Hermetists themselves. A fascinating insight into how Hermetic works circulated in the middle of the fourth century is provided by Codex VI of the Gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi, which contains extracts from three Hermetic tractates. After the Prayer of Thanksgiving towards the end of the codex the scribe has added a note saying that although a large number of discourses had come to him, he was only copying the one he had just set down and was sending it on to his correspondents because he did not want to burden them, as they probably already had copies of the same texts (NHL vi. 7a). The character of the Hermetic groups responsible for the tractates has been disputed. Against Reitzenstein and Cumont, Festugière insisted on the fundamentally Hellenic character of the Corpus (Festugière 1943–54: ii, xiii). More recently, however, scholarly opinion has tended to see the Corpus as primarily of Egyptian inspiration.21 The Egyptian atmosphere is certainly strong. The teacher at the centre of the tractates is not a philosopher engaged in intellectual debate with his disciples in the Graeco-Roman manner. He is more like a priest imparting ancient wisdom within the precincts of a great temple. Indeed, the setting for the Perfect Discourse is such a temple filled with a numinous divine presence (Ascl. 1). The appropriate attitude of the hearer is one of hushed reverence: the teacher––often Hermes Trismegistus himself––expounds; the disciples listen in awe. Prayers or hymns sometimes conclude the tractates (CH i. 31; xiii. 18; Ascl. 41) because the highest expression of wisdom is worship: true philosophy is ‘to adore the Godhead with simple mind and soul’ (Ascl. 13). The physical presence of Egypt is strong in other ways too. Egypt is seen as an image of heaven, as ‘the temple of the whole world’ (Ascl. 24). Pride is expressed in the Egyptian language in which ‘the very quality of the speech and sound of Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the objects they speak of’ (CH xvi. 2). Yet Egypt is in decline. One of the most moving passages in the Corpus is a lament for departed glory as the gods (perhaps under pressure from 21 Cf. Dillon 1996: 213: ‘the whole thought-world of the Hermetic Corpus is alien to that of Plato’. Fowden 1993: 73: Hermetism according to Mahé is ‘mythical Egyptian thought translated into Greek’. Frankfurter 1998: 240: The Hermetic Corpus was composed by ‘some shadowy conventicles of Greek-proficient [Egyptian] priests’.

46

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

Christian laws against pagan worship) withdraw from Egypt, leaving her desolate, with every sacred voice silenced (Ascl. 24, 25; NHL vi. 8. 70–3). It is not only the local colour, however, that is of Egyptian provenance. There is evidence that such central themes as the spiritual father/son relationship, the filiation of man to the divine, and the deification of the initiand’s soul are native Egyptian ideas (Daumas 1982: 13–16; Théodoridès 1982: 30–5; Griffiths 1986b: 56–9). But the expression of these is Greek. And the view of God as a triadic nous, demiurge, and world soul, to whom the individual soul is assimilated in successive stages, owes much to the standard themes of Platonism. The Hermetic Corpus presents a God who is at once both transcendent and immanent. Some tractates stress one aspect, some the other. On the one hand God is beyond words and beyond the imagination (CH i. 32; v. 1). He is the first of all entities, eternal, unbegotten, creator of all that is (CH viii. 2). He is the source of eternity and being (CH xi. 4; iii. 1). He is master and father (CH ix. 7; xviii. 12; Ascl. 22), light and life (CH i. 21), energy and power (CH xii. 20). He cannot be detected in anything in the cosmos (CH vi. 4). On the other hand, in the pantheistic fifth tractate he is reflected in the entire cosmos (CH v. 2). He is both ‘invisible and wholly visible’ (CH v. 10). He is the source of all things and yet there is nothing in the cosmos that he is not. All things that exist are in him; nothing is outside him and he is outside nothing (CH v. 9). God as nous gives birth to a second god, the demiurge in the Poemandres (CH i. 9) or the sun in the Perfect Discourse (Ascl. 29). It is worth noting that there is very little dualism in the Corpus. The demiurge, about whom there is nothing evil or shameful (CH xiv. 7), made the whole cosmos. In other versions the cosmos itself is the second god. Humankind then comes into being as the third god (CH viii. 3; x. 14; Ascl. 10). At the heart of Hermetism is a sense of wonder at the astonishing range of the human mind. In the twinkling of an eye the mind can travel to India or shoot up to the heavenly bodies (CH xi. 19). It is not bound by place or time. It can imagine itself in any place or before its own birth or even after its own death (CH xi. 20). It is truly capable of anything. This wonder at the godlike qualities of the mind finds mythical expression in the Hermetic anthropogony (which draws on Jewish midrashim on the book of Genesis) (CH i. 12–15). Anthropos was created in the image of the father as a ‘brother’ of the demiurge, the second god. He broke through the vault of heaven and looked down through the cosmic framework, ‘thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of god’. Anthropos saw the beauty of his own form reflected in the water and reached down to take Nature into an erotic embrace. He wished to inhabit nature and ‘wish and action came at the same moment’. Because of these origins the progeny of Anthropos possess a mortal body but an immortal inner self (CH i. 15). One part of ourselves is ουσι(δη, our essential being, the other *λικ, our material outer form

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

47

(Ascl. 7). Some tractates, perhaps under Pythagorean influence, take a negative view of the body: it is ‘the garment of ignorance, the foundation of vice, the bonds of corruption, the dark cage, the living death, the portable tomb’ (CH vii. 2; cf. iv. 6). Others, and not only the more pantheistic, avoid such language. Looking within oneself and even at the marvellous way in which the body is constructed draws one to God.22 There is a kinship, a community of being, with God: earthly man is a mortal god and the celestial God an immortal man (CH x. 25; xii. 1).23 In the Perfect Discourse man is said to have been created ‘good and capable of immortality through his two natures, divine and mortal’ (Ascl. 22). In fact the possession of mortality as well as divinity makes men better than the gods, who only possess a single nature. This superiority is developed in a striking way. The reciprocity that exists between man and the supreme God means that just as God has made the heavenly gods (the stars and planets), so man has made the temple gods. Man is not only deified but he also deifies. ‘Not only is he god but he also creates gods,’ as the Coptic version puts it (NHL vi. 8. 68; cf. Ascl. 23). Some sections further on Trismegistus makes it clear what he means. In Egypt there are three kinds of earthly gods: the images that are made of matter but animated by the theurgic drawing-down of a daemonic soul; the human benefactors like Asclepius’ ancestor, the discoverer of medicine, who have been deified after death; and the holy animals, which have been deified while still alive (Ascl. 37, 38). Here we have a combination of Hellenistic and ancient Egyptian belief (cf. Mahé 1982: 98– 102, 224, 315, 385). This human fashioning of the earthly gods far from diminishing their stature only points to the divine nature of human beings themselves. The whole thrust of this teaching is summed up in the final Prayer of Thanksgiving: ‘While we were in the body you made us divine through your knowledge’ (NHL vi. 7. 18–19; Ascl. 41). The return to God, the ‘way of immortality’ (NHL vi. 6. 63), has been described as a journey with three stages: gnôsis, the awakening; logos, the process of attaining maturity; and nous, the vision of the divine intellect (Mahé 1991: 351). Gnosis is a spiritual awakening that is stimulated by amazement at the powers of the human mind. Consciousness is divinity itself (Ascl. 18). To become fully conscious is to become aware of the divine within oneself, for divine consciousness is found only in God and human beings (Ascl. 7, 32). The opposite to gnosis is ignorance, which is likened to drunkenness or sleep (CH viii. 1). Ignorance is the worst evil (CH viii. 2; x. 8). For the ignorant soul is blind and a slave to the body. The soul which attains gnosis, however, can begin the ascent of Olympus (CH x. 15); or, less metaphorically, ‘He who has understood himself advances towards God’ (CH i. 21). 22 23

CH v. 6; cf. Job 34: 13; 38: 4–38, and the Egyptian Hymn to Khnum cited in Mahé 1982: 293–5, 279. On CH’s anthropology see most recently Mazzanti 1998.

48

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

The second stage is that of the acquisition of knowledge and the attaining of maturity through revelatory discourse. It involves, in Mahé’s words, the spiritualization of popular piety. Death is merely an illusion (CH viii. 1). Upon death there is a general dissolution of the physical and psychic elements which releases the essential man. The material body is given over to corruption, the form becomes invisible, the habitual character (êthos) is given over to one’s personal daemon, the bodily senses return to their sources, becoming again parts of the astral energies, and the incensive and appetitive faculties return to irrational nature. The essential man then rises through the planetary spheres, stripping away certain powers at each level––at the first the power of increasing or diminishing, at the second the power of doing evil, at the third the delusion of desire, at the fourth ambition, at the fifth presumption, at the sixth the appetites that come from wealth, and at the seventh falsehood––until he enters into the eighth sphere ‘possessing his own power’ and is able to sing hymns to the Father in the company of the other Powers that inhabit that sphere, because at last he has become like them. Those who have achieved this state ‘ascend towards the Father in order, and surrender themselves to the Powers, and having become Powers themselves, come to be in God. This is the blessed end of those who possess gnosis, to be deified (θεωθναι)’ (CH i. 26; cf. NHL vi. 6. 59–60; Festugière 1943–54: iii. 124–52). The final stage is the vision of nous that draws one up like a magnet (CH iv. 11). The rapture of seeing the beauty of God culminates in deification as the pure nous, separated progressively from the bodily senses, the psychic faculties, and the vices, is able to share a community of being with the Father and all his celestial powers. Such deification is not the exclusive prerogative of the elect but is open in principle to all. It is only necessary for human beings to be awakened for the return to become possible. The discussion of deification in CH x introduces the term µεταβολα, the transformations which the soul undergoes after death. Asclepius says to his disciple Tat that it is impossible ‘for a soul that has contemplated the beauty of the Good to be deified (αποθεωθναι) while in a human body’ (CH x. 6). He goes on to explain that all souls in the world are from one universal soul, and the transformations they have undergone distribute them among various kinds of creatures. Then in a passage reminiscent of Plutarch he says: ‘Human souls begin to enter into immortality by transforming themselves into daemons and then in the same way into the choir of the gods’ (CH x. 7; cf. Mor. 943–4). Gnosis and moral effort together produce a good soul, which after death undergoes a transformation and ‘becomes entirely nous’ (CH x. 6). The bad soul remains as it is and punishes itself. When Poemandres is asked whether all human beings do not possess nous, he evades the question (CH x. 6). In the fourth tractate, however, it is stated categorically that nous is not distributed to all. God keeps it, as it were, in a

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

49

great mixing-bowl and gives it as a reward to those who respond to the proclamation of gnosis (CH iv. 3–4). The response to gnosis is a fundamental orientation towards the invisible rather than the visible, the divine rather than the mortal. The author recognizes the difficulty of this. It is hard to abandon the familiar and to set aside the delights of the visible world. Yet this is necessary, for although the world is the work of God, and whoever contemplates it can recognize its maker, it is inimical to spiritual progress: ‘If you do not first hate your body, my son, you will not be able to love yourself; but when you have come to love yourself, you will have nous, and having come to possess nous you will participate in knowledge’ (CH iv. 6). It is this correct choice which deifies human beings, though not before they have departed from the body and passed through choirs of daemons and the orbits of the planets as they press on towards the One (CH iv. 7). The choice of gnosis brings about baptism in nous and is the beginning of the pursuit of the good. The opposite choice enmeshes human beings in bodily pleasures and leads to destruction. In CH xiii the essential core of humanity similarly needs to be made divine through being endowed with nous. In this context a further term is introduced, that of παλιγγενεσα, or regeneration. Hermes teaches Tat that regeneration means a new birth ν ν- or ν θε-––equivalent expressions because the nous belongs to the divine world––which results in a change from a life that is mortal to one that is immortal and therefore divine. Although the agent of regeneration is another human being who has become a god, regeneration is not taught but is the result of God’s mercy (CH xiii. 3, 10). It comes about when the corporeal senses are set aside and the twelve punishments or vices (ignorance, sorrow, unchastity, desire, injustice, greed, deceit, envy, fraud, anger, rashness, and malice) are driven out by the ten divine powers or virtues (knowledge of God, knowledge of joy, chastity, endurance, justice, sharing, truth, and finally the Good, Life, and Light) (CH xiii. 7–9). ‘You know, my child,’ concludes Hermes, ‘the manner of regeneration. When the Decad is present, my child, a spiritual generation has been contrived and it drives out the Dodecad, and we have been deified by this generation’ (CH xiii. 10; cf. Grese 1979: 133–45). It is striking that in this tractate deification is not postponed until the end of the journey through the spheres after death. It comes about when a human being no longer lives a corporeal existence but through the coming together of the ten divine powers acquires nous and is thus able to transcend the limitations of the physical world. These differing anthropologies seem to imply at least two distinct senses of the term ‘deification’, the one signifying the reduction of human beings to their divine core, the immortal nous, the other their endowment with a divine nous which they did not previously possess. These distinct senses, however, do not imply rival doctrines of the soul’s ascent. The Hermetists

50

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

were not particularly anxious about consistency. What we have here is a difference of emphasis rather than a difference of doctrine (cf. Fowden 1993: 108). Each tractate is able to present a different emphasis without compromising the whole. Thus a fall and a corresponding ascent are central to the teaching of the Poemandres. Deification in this tractate is described as a stripping away to the bare nous, which can only reach its fulfilment in the divine pleroma. CH x implies the same doctrine, glossing it by explaining the ascent as a series of transformations first into a daemon and then into a god. CH iv recognizes a pre-existent man who is sent down by God not as a punishment for sin but to adorn the Earth. He is endowed with logos but not with nous, which is only given to him when he commits himself to gnosis. It is this gift of nous that deifies human beings by enabling them to wing their way up to the One. In CH xiii there is neither a primordial fall nor an ascent. There is no innate divinity in humankind waiting to be recovered. Rather, human beings are deified by regeneration, which really changes them, transforming them into nous so that they can know God. This is not just an eschatological possibility but a present reality. The divine life can begin now and the body and earthly concerns be left behind. The technical Hermetica do not contradict this teaching; they simply dispense with the need for a teacher. Through the use of the right magical formulae a spiritual initiation could be effected on one’s own which would lead to ascent, rebirth, and the vision of the divine. In one early fourthcentury papyrus the entire rite, which leads through lesser experiences to the vision of the supreme God, Aion, is called an απαθανατισµ––an ‘immortalization’ or ‘deification’ (P. Graec. Mag. iv. 741, 747; Fowden 1993: 82–4). But in this case the effects are not permanent: the απαθανατισµ ‘can be performed three times a year’. For its purpose is not to effect an escape from the body but to obtain an oracle directly from the god, which can only be done if the human mind is raised to the level of the divine. 8. Interaction with Christianity The Graeco-Roman environment of the first three centuries ce was not simply the background against which the early Church developed, either keeping itself free from contamination or succumbing to ‘Hellenization’. Christians were part of the Graeco-Roman world and interacted with it. They were familiar with the idea of deification from the beginning, not only from the philosophical schools but also from the ruler-cult, the mysteries, and the study circles of popular teachers. Even if they repudiated it, they lived on intimate terms with it. The figure of the philosopher commanded immense respect. But whether he was viewed as a θεο αν!ρ, or ‘divine man’, before the third century ce is

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

51

doubtful.24 Philostratus’ publication of the life of the Pythagorean thaumaturge, Apollonius of Tyana, in the 220s set an example in this respect, followed by biographies of Pythagoras himself by Porphyry and Iamblichus at the beginning of the fourth century. The Christian portrayal of Origen as a θεο α.νθρωπο may have been partly in response to such literary activity.25 After Iamblichus the philosopher acquires a more deeply religious character, allowing modern scholars to refer to him as ‘the pagan holy man’. The most enthusiastic admirer of the pagan θεοι α.νδρε (although he does not use the expression) was Eunapius, whose Lives of the Sophists appeared in the ˙ last decade of the fourth century. But by then pagan holy men had become marginalized. In an aggressively Christian empire they survived only by leading lives of philosophical contemplation and theurgical worship in quiet seclusion. Yet when the true Christian philosopher is described, it is in the exact terms of his pagan counterpart. Writing in the 430s, Cyril of Alexandria claims: In reality a sage is, and is described by us as being, a man who has been enriched by clear and unambiguous doctrine relating to the God of all things, and has made as careful an enquiry as possible into the matters that concern him, I mean as far as is permissible to human beings, and has acquired along with this a perfect knowledge of all necessary things, so as to be in a position to enable those who follow his teaching with righteousness to conceive a desire for adorning themselves with the splendours of virtue. (C. Jul. 5, PG 76. 773ab)

On a more popular level, the Hermetic texts also had their Christian readers. We know from the contents of the sixth codex of the Nag Hammadi library that the spiritual teaching of Hermetism appealed to fourthcentury Christian Gnostics. Amongst catholic Christians Hermes figures chiefly as a pagan prophet foretelling the triumph of Christianity (Fowden 1993: 179–80). In Egypt the first catholic Christian to quote from the Hermetica is Didymus the Blind (c.313–98). The next is Cyril of Alexandria, who quotes Hermes at some length in his attack on Julian’s Contra Galilaeos to show that the very teacher relied upon by Julian was really a prophet of Christ (C. Jul. 1, PG. 76. 552d–553b). The Hermetica passed very early through Latin translation into Roman Africa (Fowden 1993: 198). Tertullian 24 The idea of the θεο αν!ρ was taken up in Germany between the wars by members of the History of Religions School, notably Ludwig Bieler (1935), who developed it as a way of linking the New Testament to the wider Roman world. Bieler conceived of the θεο αν!ρ as an allgemeine Typus, an inclusive category, which could explain how Jesus fitted into his ancient milieu as a sage and wonderworker. Although the expression θεο αν!ρ is first attested in Pindar and Plato (LSJ s.v. θεο (a)3), the evidence for its early use is rather meagre. Opponents of the History of Religions School such as Carl Holladay (1977) have disputed whether a Hellenistic concept of the ‘divine man’ ever really existed at all. In fact the θεο αν!ρ as a recognizable figure only comes into prominence in the later Roman empire. For the debate on Bieler’s Typus see Corrington 1986. 25 For the late antique flowering of pagan holy men, and the part played by their biographies in the rivalry between paganism and Christianity, see Fowden 1982 and Cox 1983.

52

Deification in the Graeco-Roman World

mentions ‘the Egyptian Mercury’ as a teacher of belief in the transmigration of souls (An. 33. 2). Lactantius, who was of African origin, and Augustine both appeal to Hermes as a pagan prophet of Christianity. This became his established role in the Christian world, in spite of Marcellus of Ancyra’s attacking him (along with Plato and Aristotle) as the inspirer of all heresies (Fowden 1993: 209). The spiritual and theurgical side of Hermetism did not make its full impact on Christianity until much later. In the third century it was taken up enthusiastically by Iamblichus, who passed it on to the later Neoplatonists. It was thus through Proclus and Ps.-Dionysius that Hermetism influenced the Christian mystical tradition. Nevertheless it is curious that the use of the verb θεοποιω in a spiritual sense appears for the first time in the second century, very possibly simultaneously, both in the Hermetic Corpus and in Clement of Alexandria. There is no evidence that Clement had direct knowledge of the Hermetic tractates, though of course he had certainly studied Gnostic texts at first hand for polemical purposes. Yet the declaration in the Poemandres that the blessed end of those who possess gnosis is to be deified (CH i. 26) resonates with Clement’s assertion that the teaching of Christ, which is true gnosis, deifies the believer (Paed. i. 98. 3). What is beyond doubt is Clement’s and his successors’ debt to Platonism. The definition of likeness to God as the goal of the spiritual life, the concept of participation, the metaphor of the soul’s ascent, and the notion of reaching out to God in ecstasy are all of Platonic origin. But in the development of the idea of deification and its distinctive vocabulary, it was Christianity that led the way. By the time Porphyry first wrote of the philosopher deifying himself, Christians had already been speaking of deification for more than a century.

3 The Jewish Paradigm From Ezekiel to the yored merkavah

1. Ancient Israel Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai’s flight to Jamnia (Yabveh) just before the Romans captured Jerusalem in 70 ce marks the beginning of a new era in Judaism. Not only was the Second Temple destroyed, bringing to an end the sacrificial system, but Messianic eschatology suffered a blow to its credibility that was to be compounded sixty-five years later by the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt. The expected Kingdom, in which the faithful would find spiritual fulfilment in the personal reign of God, now receded into the distant future. In its place there developed, alongside the study of the Torah (for the few, at least, who were fortunate enough to find a suitable teacher) a spirituality of assimilation to the life of the angels, an angelification or deification (for the angels were the ‘gods’) that could be anticipated even in this life, at least in the imagination, by an ecstatic ascent to the vision of the throne-chariot of God. Little of this is discernible in the canonical books of the Bible. In the earliest period of Hebrew religion we are aware much more of the profound gulf which separates the Creator from the created world. Nor does there seem to be any escape from the common fate which all the dead were believed to experience as shades in Sheol. The first elements of a belief that will come to resemble that of deification may be observed in the post-exilic Book of Ezekiel, in the visions of the dry bones (37: 1–14) and the thronechariot of God (1: 1–28; 10: 1–22; 43: 1–5). These elements become more plentiful in the later Wisdom and Apocalyptic literature, most notably in such features as the multiplication of grades of angels and demons connecting God with his creation, the development of ideas of immortality and resurrection, and the translation of the heroes of the faith to heaven. Angels probably derive from the ancient Canaanite gods. Ancient Hebrew religion was monolatrous rather than monotheistic. It was not until Jeremiah

54

The Jewish Paradigm

and Deutero-Isaiah that the pagan gods were declared to be ‘nothings’, mere empty idols (Jer. 2: 11; 10: 7–8; 16: 20, etc.; Isa. 41: 29; 43: 10; 44: 8, etc.). This is because Jewish monotheism developed not from philosophical speculation but as a result of the awful encounter with a majestic, personal God, a God who could be worshipped only in fear and trembling. This exalted experience of Yahweh eventually annihilated the other gods. But before they became ‘nothings’ they were fitted into Yahwism by being dethroned and set in a heavenly court ruled over by Yahweh, where they simply carried out the decrees of his will (Albright 1968: 166–8). Yahweh himself is commonly called elohim in the Old Testament. This is an ‘abstract plural’ or a ‘plural of intensity’ signifying the totality of divine power as a personal unity (Eichrodt 1967: i. 185–7; cf. Johnson 1942: 19–23). Alongside this the word is also used as a true plural for the lower beings in the heavenly court, the former gods that were later to be called angels (Pss. 29: 1; 89: 7; Gen. 6: 2, 4; Job 1: 6; 2: 1; 38: 7). The difference between these elohim and Yahweh is revealed with especial clarity in Psalm 82, where Yahweh, enthroned in the midst of the heavenly council, pronounces judgement on those gods which have not upheld divine justice: ‘But now I say: though you are gods, all of you sons of the Most High, yet you shall die as men must die, shall perish like the (earthly) princes’ (vv. 6–7) (Mowinckel’s translation 1967: i. 150). Following a tradition that goes back to the Targum, the older generation of exegetes often took these ‘gods’ to represent corrupt human judges. But in their original context they were literally the pagan gods who were set over the other nations by Yahweh (cf. Deut. 32: 8) on the model of the Ugaritic divine council (Mullen 1980: 175–209). For their failure to prevent oppression and injustice they were condemned to suffer the fate of mortal men. Even the ‘gods’ can die if they are not obedient to Yahweh and do not exercise their rule in conformity with his moral demands (Weiser 1962: 51, 556–7; Mowinckel 1967: i. 150-1). In the pre-exilic writings of the Hebrew Bible no one, whether king or commoner, had any expectation of a life beyond the grave. The human person was seen not in analytical terms as a combination of body and soul, or of body, spirit, and soul, but as a ‘unit of vital power’ which can only express itself through the body and ebbs away at death (Johnson 1964: 87–8). The final state of the nefesh, the ‘soul’, was as a silent shade in the underworld, where it had no communication with God or with the living, no real consciousness. At the end of this early period, however, there are two apparent exceptions. How are the bodily translations to heaven of Enoch (Gen. 5: 24) and Elijah (2 Kgs. 2: 11) to be understood? It has long been recognized that the Priestly redactor of Genesis 5 was acquainted with Babylonian mythological traditions. Commentators have often drawn attention to the parallel between Enoch, the seventh of the antediluvian patriarchs, and Emmeduranki, the seventh of the primeval Babylonian kings, who was

The Jewish Paradigm

55

similarly carried off to the gods. (cf. VanderKam 1984: 33–51). Claus Westermann, however, in his monumental study of Genesis has argued that the parallel between the Babylonian list and Genesis 5 is superficial (1984: 351–4, 388–9). The salient point for the Hebrew author is that Enoch had a particularly close relationship with God. His departure is described in the words: ‘and he was not’, then are added: ‘for God took him’, the verb laqah being a technical term for translation. This second expression, according to Westermann, is a gloss which attempts to ‘rationalize’ Enoch’s disappearance (ibid: 358), without implying any view of a mythological place for him to inhabit beyond this world. ‘Only gradually did the notion of removal as a state enter into the narrative of removal as an event’ (ibid: 359). The reference to Enoch in Genesis 5 is exilic if not later (von Rad 1972: 72; cf. Westermann 1984: 358–9). The story of Elijah’s translation is also from the same period (Gray 1970: 472). It has been suggested that this awesome vision is either an elaboration of the title ‘the chariotry of Israel and the horsemen thereof’ or the result of the association of the story of Elijah with an old solar cult-legend (ibid: 476). There may be some truth in this, but as in the case of Enoch’s translation nothing is said about the place to which Elijah was transported. The translations of Enoch and Elijah are thus comparatively late accounts of extraordinary events which did not in any way affect the expectations of the ordinary Israelite. Life was a gift from God, which presupposed living in obedience to him; death was the withdrawal of that gift, to be accepted with resignation. There is no cult of the dead in the Old Testament: ‘The dead praise not the Lord’ (Ps. 115: 17). By death they leave the covenant community, lose their relationship with Yahweh, and are of no concern to the living.1 At this stage in Israel’s religious development there is no suggestion of belief in resurrection or immortality, still less of belief in deification. Even for the elohim in the heavenly court, life is a gift which depends on obedience. 2. The Impact of Hellenism When Jesus ben Sira’s grandson went to stay in Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (126/5 bce), he discovered a flourishing Jewish community with an established tradition of learning based on the Greek Torah (Sir. Prol.). His contact with the Diaspora encouraged him to translate his grandfather’s book into Greek ‘for those living abroad who wished to gain learning’ so that they could live according to the Law even if 1 The eighth-century prophet Amos is the first to attempt to bring Sheol within God’s domain (Amos 9: 2) but his is a lone voice.

56

The Jewish Paradigm

they had no Hebrew.2 The tradition of wisdom that the younger Ben Sira brought to the Egyptian Jewish community was an old one with roots going back to the scribal schools of the ancient Near East. Although originally hokmah, or wisdom, was the practical knowledge that enabled one to carry out skilled tasks, by the Hellenistic age it had come to be identified with the culture of the educated elite. Ben Sira sets out the benefits of such a culture: a man who devotes himself to the study of the Law, the wisdom of ancient texts, and the discourses of famous men with the subtleties of their parables and proverbs will be a counsellor to the great and travel widely. His international outlook, however, will be balanced by a judicious moral sense and fidelity to the Law (Sir. 39: 1–5). For worldly success will not be his primary aim. All his life he will hunger and thirst after wisdom (24: 21) and when he has found her he will share her with those who seek instruction (24: 34). Although Ben Sira did not found a school, as a Jewish sage he would have had his disciples. This is reflected in his advice to the reader to attach himself to a teacher of wisdom if he can find one (6: 36) and also in his confidence that a lasting reputation will win him immortality (39: 9). Wisdom is first personified in the Book of Proverbs, where, betraying her mythological origins, she appears as God’s companion in the work of creation (8: 1–36). With Ben Sira the figure of Wisdom becomes the personification of the Torah (Sir. 24: 1–24). The benefits she confers are those of the Law––and she confers them not just on her professional exponents but on all who love her. She exalts her sons (4: 11), fills with joy those who seek her (4: 12) and bestows glory on those who hold fast to her (4: 13). She also showers material rewards on the homes of the righteous (1: 17). But there is nothing in Ben Sira’s teaching about rewards after death. Death is final: the dead do not return (38: 21). Immortality consists simply in leaving behind a son as a replica of oneself (30: 4) or in attaining a reputation that will outlast one (39: 9). By the time of the composition of the Book of Wisdom, however, in the first century bce, there has been a fundamental change. Wisdom is now no longer a personification of the religion of Israel but a figure much closer to God himself. She is ‘a breath of the power of God’, ‘a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty’, ‘an image of his goodness’ (Wisd. 7: 25, 26). People are said to be saved by her, for she is no longer distinct from God (9: 18). Images of light abound: Wisdom is ‘brilliant and unfading’ (6: 12); her ‘radiance never ceases’ (7: 10); she is ‘a reflection of eternal light’ (7: 26); she is ‘more beautiful than the sun and excels every constellation of the stars’ (7: 29). Through this luminous emanation God reaches out to humankind. And the righteous respond with fidelity, trust, and love. Death will no longer cut them off from God. 2 At this time the only education available for Jews living abroad was a Greek one. Educated Jews of the Diaspora ‘necessarily became alienated from the civilization of their ancestors’ (Bickerman 1988: 303).

The Jewish Paradigm

57

Endowed now with immortality, the dead live for ever in the presence of God (3: 1; 5: 15). Ben Sira wanted to encourage Diaspora Jews to stay faithful to the Law and resist the seductive attractions of their Hellenistic education. The temptation to infidelity for the anonymous author of the Book of Wisdom was more specific. The question now was: granted the shortness of life and the finality of death, should we not enjoy the good things of this world to the full regardless of moral constraints? The Book of Wisdom’s reply was to put human life in an eternal perspective: ‘the righteous live for ever and their reward is with the Lord’ (5: 15). If the author of the Book of Wisdom predates Philo, he is the first Hellenistic Jewish writer to posit an immortal soul. He attacks the old notion of Sheol as a belief that encourages a carpe diem mentality (1: 16–2: 11). Immortality or, rather, incorruption is the state for which humanity was created. The term αθανασα, ‘immortality’, appears in a parabiblical text for the first time. But it has been adapted somewhat to a Hebrew perspective. The human soul, whether in toto or in part, is not immortal by nature; it wins immortality through obedience to the Law. Immortality is thus a gift from God bestowed on each soul according to its merits. Another word which appears for the first time is αφθαρσα, or ‘incorruption’. This is not just a synonym for immortality (contra Kolarcik 1991). It had been used originally by Epicureans to explain how the gods differed from human beings (Reese 1970: 65–8; Winston 1979: 121). In the Book of Wisdom this attribute is transferred from the gods to men, because by creating man in his own image God gave him a share in his own eternity (2: 23).3 Incorruption has an ontological dimension: the Spirit of God is incorrupt (α.φθαρτον), like the light of the Law (12: 1; 18: 4). Immortality, on the other hand, is a human quality: it is righteousness (1: 15), remembrance of virtue (4: 1), kinship to wisdom (8: 17), knowledge of the power of God (15: 3). Another striking Greek borrowing is the designation of the manna in the wilderness as ‘ambrosial food’ (19: 21). In the Book of Wisdom the pagan food of the immortal gods becomes the food of immortality, falling to humanity as a divine gift. The kinship which the human soul enjoys with Wisdom, the emanation of divine glory, enables the devout to attain a new intimacy with God. Wisdom makes them ‘friends of God’ (7: 27), an expression applied to Abraham in the Bible (Isa. 41: 8; 2 Chr. 20: 7; Jas. 2: 23), and to virtuous men by the philosophers (Plato, Rep. 621c; Tim. 53d; Epictetus 2. 17. 29; 4. 3. 9, etc.), and akin to the Hellenistic ‘friends of the king’ attested in Ptolemaic Egypt (OGI 100.1; LSJ s.v. φλο; cf. Winston 1979: 188–9), which suggests a role as counsellors at the court of heaven. A similar royal setting lies behind the idea that for the just man, union with Wisdom makes her a ‘throne-partner’ 3 Or ‘his own identity’ if one reads 'διτητο with Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus against the α'διτητο of the textus receptus. Winston translates: ‘his own proper being’ (1979: ad loc.).

58

The Jewish Paradigm

(πα´ρεδρο) with him (6: 14). ‘Throne-partner’ is also used to express Wisdom’s relationship with God (9: 4), implying that the just man who has united himself with Wisdom can take his place in the divine council. It is tempting to think that the Ptolemaic enthroning of the images of Pharaoh and his consort in the temples of the gods might have contributed to the idea of Wisdom as πα´ρεδρο, but the term used for the Ptolemies is συ´νναοι θεο (‘gods sharing the same temple’). The immediate antecedents of the enthroning of Wisdom are in fact biblical, the verb παρεδρευ´ω already being found in the Septuagint version of Prov. 8: 3 (cf. 1 Enoch 84: 3). A nonbiblical influence, however, has been detected in one further image, the most intimate of them all. Union with Wisdom is described at 8: 2 in nuptial terms that have been shown to owe something to the language of Hellenistic hymns to Isis (Reese 1970: 46–9). That is not to say that the Isis cult had any appeal for the author of the Book of Wisdom himself, although we know that there were Jews in the Hellenistic period who were attracted to the pagan mysteries (Bickerman 1988: 254–5). Rather, we may guess that the language and imagery of the Isis cult satisfied a yearning which called for something equivalent in Judaism. The author of the Book of Wisdom was not the only writer of the Jewish Diaspora to be influenced by Greek thought. There were apostates such as the Dositheus who became a priest of Alexander and the deified Ptolemies towards the end of the third century bce (Bickerman 1988: 87), but there were others who adopted Greek culture without in any way discarding their Jewish faith. Nobody managed this with greater skill or versatility than Philo of Alexandria. Born in about 20 bce of a distinguished Jewish family,4 he received a liberal Greek education which brought him into contact with the revived Platonism of Eudorus and Posidonius. He was not, however, a systematic philosopher. His main concern was to comment on the Pentateuch in a way that would commend the teaching of Moses to Gentile proselytes and Jews who were looking for an intellectually satisfying expression of their faith in modern (i.e. Hellenistic) dress. A most useful tool in achieving this aim was the technique of allegorical interpretation, which had already been developed by Alexandrian scholars in relation to Homer. It was axiomatic to Philo that the Bible could contain nothing unworthy of God. Therefore any attribution of jealousy or anger, for example, to God had to have a deeper meaning. Yet in spite of not being a systematic philosopher, Philo marshalls his arguments coherently and effectively. He elaborates a chain of being that bridges the gap between God and man––while still maintaining a supremely transcendent God––and introduces the possibility of the ascent of the soul to God even in this life through the practice of philosophy. As with the 4 His brother was Alabarch, or head of the Jewish community of Alexandria, and rich enough to lend Herod Agrippa 200,000 talents; his apostate nephew, Julius Alexander, was the first non-Roman prefect of Egypt (Josephus, Ant. 20.100).

The Jewish Paradigm

59

pagan Platonists, however, this ascent is not called deification. In spite of the application of the term θε to a broad spectrum of beings, man does not become a god in any real sense. Philo frequently refers to the personal God of the Bible as / θε, but θε in his usage, as in Greek writers generally, is a predicate with a wide application, not a term confined to the supreme deity alone.5 Occasionally the personal name of God, / 0ν, the Septuagint translation of yhwh, is contrasted with θε and κυ´ριο, which represent the creative and providential powers of God, respectively, and is set above them (V. Mos. 2.99).6 It is unclear how far these powers are to be thought of as hypostatized. They are the Stoic logoi, the Platonic Forms, which Philo equates with the thoughts of God.7 He also represents them in a more personal way as the angels, ruled by the two cherubim who guard the gates of paradise or who are set over the ark of the covenant. The sum of all the Forms is the Logos, who is the supreme mediator between the transcendent uncreated God and the created world (Chadwick 1970: 143–5; Dillon 1977: 159–61). In relation to the ‘first God’ he is the ‘second God’, the first-born son of God, the wisdom and image of God (QG 2.62; Agr. 51; Fuga 109; Conf. 147). In relation to humankind he is the Archetype, the heavenly Adam, into whom God ‘breathed a share of his own deity’ (Det. 86) (Philo takes the two descriptions of the creation of man in Gen. 1: 27 and 2: 7 to refer to two distinct events). Other beings also mediate between God and humanity. The heavenly bodies are said to be visible gods because they are the purest of corporeal things (Gig. 8; Opif. 27, 55). Between the heavens and the earth the air is inhabited by its own incorporeal beings. Some of these descend into human bodies and become souls; Philo equates the remainder with the daemons of the Greeks and the angels of the Bible (Gig. 6, 16). (Like many of the Rabbis, he believed in the pre-existence of souls but not in the cycle of reincarnation.) Earthly man, the product of a second human creation (Gen. 2: 7) and the last creature in the chain of being to participate in immortality, is a mixture of rational soul created directly by God and clay into which God has breathed life, the divine breath rendering the invisible part immortal (Opif. 135). The body, which with the irrational soul was created not directly by God but by the powers, is simply a dwelling-place for the higher, rational soul, which is ‘a holy image, of all images the most godlike’ (Fuga 69; Spec. Leg. 1. 329; Opif. 137; cf. Wolfson 1947: i. 387). It is an image of the 5 Wolfson 1947: i. 173–80; Holladay 1977: 153–4. Philo’s distinction between the articular and anarthrous use of θε for God and the Logos was to be taken up by Origen. 6 Philo associates θε with the creative power of God because of an etymological connection which he sees between θε and τθηµι. 7 Chadwick 1970: 142; Dillon 1996: 158–66. This identification was probably the work of Antiochus of Ascalon (Dillon 1996: 95).

60

The Jewish Paradigm

Archetype, the Logos, ‘a fragment (απσπασµα) of that divine and blessed soul’ (Det. 90; Opif. 146). This should not be taken in a Stoic sense to mean that the human soul is the same as the divine primary substance. There is no cosmic soul in Philo, nothing outside the primal God that is divine per se. Wolfson claims that the designation of the human soul as a ‘fragment’ means that it is ‘an image of the idea of rational soul, which is as immaterial as its pattern’ (Wolfson 1947: i. 390; cf. Holladay 1977: 192). In Runia’s judgement, however, Philo reflects a lack of clarity endemic in contemporary Platonism––only with Plotinus is the question of whether ‘the rational part is related to the divine in a model/copy or a part/whole relation’ finally resolved (Runia 1988: 68). The intellect is the ruling element of the soul, and because the human intellect ‘evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in all the world’, ‘it is as it were a god to him who carries and enshrines it as an image’ (Opif. 69). The human intellect is a god not in fact but by analogy. There is a gulf between the human and the divine which is never fully transcended in Philo. The first man is not the same thing as God but simply ‘of near kin to the Ruler, since the divine spirit had flowed into him in full current’ (Opif. 144). Philo discusses the soul’s ascent to God on four levels: the religious (which is the flight from idolatry), the philosophical, the ethical, and the mystical (Billings 1919: 11). The philosophical level may be studied conveniently in the treatise On the Migration of Abraham. First after relinquishing astrology, which according to Philo identifies the universe with the primal God, the intellect must come to know itself and its abode, the body. Then rising from the sensible to the intelligible world, it will be able to soar to the contemplation of Him that Is (Migr. 194–5). The passage from selfknowledge to the knowledge of God, however, is not achieved through intellectual effort alone. ‘The first aim of knowledge’, says Philo, drawing on his Jewish piety as well as Socrates, ‘is to hold that we know nothing, he alone being wise who is also alone God’ (Migr. 134). The heights above the earth are too exalted to be reached by the powers of thought: ‘One would need to become a god––something which is impossible––in order to be able to apprehend God’ (Frg. from QE 2.258; trans. Marcus). Wisdom, faith, piety, the practice of the virtues––these are the things which raise the intellect to God. On the ethical level, the search for wisdom begins with the examination of the sovereign function of the intellect within the microcosm of man (Migr. 218). This leads to a decision to escape from the body––the ‘foul prisonhouse’––and its pleasures and lusts, and provides the motivation for the cultivation of the virtues (Migr. 9; Leg. Alleg. 1.108; Abr. 52–4; cf. Dillon 1996: 149). The successful practice of the virtues enables the person who is on the way to perfection to attain µετριοπα´θεια (‘moderation of passion’), but the perfect human being strives to eradicate the passions altogether and arrive at απα´θεια (‘absence of passion’) (Leg. Alleg. 3. 132; cf. Dillon 1996: 151–2).

The Jewish Paradigm

61

The virtues, being immortal, themselves confer immortality, for the soul is not immortal in its own right. The winning of immortality is described by Philo as παλιγγενεσα (‘rebirth’) (Cher. 114), which simply means that virtuous souls after death become pure noes (cf. QE 2.46 and CH xiii 3 and 10). This enables them to live for ever with the angels (cf. Wolfson 1947: i. 405–6). But not all appear to be capable of this. Evil people, Philo seems to imply in a discussion of Gen. 2: 17, having preserved no part at all of the true life (i.e. having lived entirely in the lower soul, which perishes with the body) vanish utterly (QG 1. 16; cf. Wolfson 1947: i. 407–13). The notion that the souls of the wicked perish is a philosophical idea that appears to go back to Chrysippus (Dillon 1996: 177–8). The goal of the moral life is the Platonic likeness to God, which Philo sees as equivalent to the Stoic telos of living in conformity with nature (Migr. 131) (Dillon 1996: 145–6; Nikiprowetzky 1977: 127). Both are equated with the teaching of Moses, for humankind was created originally in the image and likeness of God, and to follow nature is to keep the Law and follow the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. Philo recognizes, however, that here too human effort alone is insufficient. If we lift ourselves towards heaven without divine supervision, we will incur shipwreck (Migr. 171; cf. Leg. Alleg. 3.136). The achievement of the telos is only possible when God himself ‘grants to the worthy a share of his own nature, which is repose’ (Post. C. 28). It should be noted that ‘nature’ here refers not to the essence of God, which is incommunicable, but to one of his key attributes: the attainment of apatheia enables one to receive the gift of divine immutability (Post. C. 27). The soul, however, still remains a created entity. Participation in God does not therefore imply becoming God, or even a god. The separate identity of the individual is retained through becoming like God rather than being changed essentially. The mystical level is expressed in Philo’s description of an encounter between the human and the divine which is possible only out of the body–– in this life in a state of ecstasy, in the next when a person has become pure nous. An intellect possessed by divine love forgets itself utterly (Somn. 2.232). It is ‘drawn and seized’ and ‘led by the attractive force of sovereign existences’ (QG 4.140). It is ‘possessed by a sober intoxication like those seized with Corybantic frenzy, and is inspired, filled by another sort of longing and a more fitting desire . . . the eye of the understanding spins with dizziness’ (Opif. 70–1; cf. Heres. 68–70; Lewy 1929; Winston 1985: 358 n. 341). In more philosophical language Philo says: When the prophetic intellect becomes divinely inspired and filled with God, it becomes like the monad, not being at all mixed with any of those things associated with duality. But he who is resolved into the nature of unity is said to come near God in a kind of family relation, for having given up and left behind all mortal kinds, he is changed into the divine, so that such men become kin to God and truly divine. (QE 2. 29; trans. Marcus)

62

The Jewish Paradigm

One should not read into this more than Philo intended. ‘He who is resolved into the nature of unity’ is exemplified elsewhere by the emaciated ascetic who has virtually become a disembodied intellect, or by Moses after death, who ascends to God as pure nous (Mut. 33; V. Mos. 2. 288). It is this reduction to incorporeality, rather than any essential transformation, which is signified by the expression ‘changed into the divine’ (cf. Holladay 1977: 155–60). The supreme example of a man who has attained the telos and become ‘truly divine’ is Moses.8 Even in his youth Moses was not like an ordinary human being. His intellect, which ‘dwelt in his body like an image in its shrine’, was so dazzling that his contemporaries did not know ‘whether it was human or divine or a mixture of both’ (V. Mos. 1. 27; cf. Gig. 24). It was not Moses’ natural attributes alone which brought him close to the divine. Through his virtues and his entry on Mount Sinai into the darkness where God was, he became for his people a god and a king. Having come into contact with ‘the unseen, invisible, incorporeal and archetypal essence of existing things’, he became himself ‘a piece of work beautiful and godlike, a model for those who are willing to copy it’ (V. Mos. 1. 158). The scriptural basis on which Philo is able to call Moses a god is Exodus 7: 1: ‘See, I gave you as a god to Pharaoh’ (LXX). In many passages in which this text is cited or alluded to Philo is quick to point out that Moses is described as a god by analogy: he is a god to Pharaoh in the same way that the nous is a god to the soul, or that a wise man is a god to a fool (Leg. Alleg. 1.40; Det. 162). Or alternatively, he is ‘a god to men, not to the different parts of nature, thus leaving to the Father of all the place of King and God of gods’ (Prob. 43). Yet in other passages Philo seems to go beyond a merely analogous use of the term. In a discussion of the role of the high-priest when he enters the Holy of Holies, Philo describes him as neither a man nor a god, because he unites the two extremes in his own person, being contiguous with each. He will not call him a god because ‘this name is a prerogative assigned to the chief prophet, Moses, while he was still in Egypt’ (Somn. 2.189). Moses is granted the title because of ‘his partnership with the Father and Maker of all’ (V. Mos. 1. 158). He is ‘deemed worthy of divine rank’ because he is a friend of God possessed by divine love (Prob. 44). After death he did not take his place among the angels like most ordinary virtuous men, nor even among the Forms like Isaac and Enoch, but was advanced even higher above the heavens to stand beside God himself (Sacr. 6, 8; QG 1.86). Was Moses, then, as E. R. Goodenough asks, θε in Philo’s mind? (Goodenough 1935: 229). Goodenough’s answer is yes and no. He saw Moses as a bridge between God and man, as something approaching the 8 The main studies of Philo’s treatment of Moses as a god are Goodenough 1935: 195–230; Meeks 1967: 100–31; Meeks 1968; Holladay 1977: 103–98; and Runia 1988.

The Jewish Paradigm

63

Pythagorean ‘third race’, the result of Philo’s vacillating ‘between the monotheism on the one hand which [he] had from his Jewish ancestry and from the Neo-Pythagorean and Platonic traditions in philosophy, and on the other hand the popular tendency to deify great figures and heroes’ (Goodenough 1935: 223–4). Wayne Meeks later confirmed Goodenough’s overall judgement but attempted to set Philo’s views in a more Jewish context by suggesting that he made use of an existing midrash on Moses which already connected Exodus 7: 1 with the ascent of Mount Sinai (1967: 104–5; 1968: 355–7). The next response came from Carl Holladay, who demonstrated in a study of the key texts that Philo never calls Moses a god in a literal sense, his use of theos being either titular––distinguishing Moses in the Bible from any other personage––or allegorical (1977: 136–54). Even On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 8–10, the most important passage cited as evidence of the literal deification of Moses, turns out on close analysis to have an ethicalallegorical significance. It was Moses’ ‘sovereignty over the passions of the soul’ that enabled him to be appointed a god. Accordingly, ‘his being appointed θε merely testifies to how successfully he has enslaved all the somatic passions and thus exemplifies the one in whom νο rules the σµα, as it should be in the ideal virtuous man’ (Holladay 1977: 139). A more recent commentator, David Runia, reaches a conclusion close to that of Holladay: ‘The fact . . . that Moses is given the same title as God is certainly a great honour, but it does not imply a kind of deification in which Moses comes to share in the same nature as God’ (1988: 60). Runia sees Philo’s interpretation of Exod. 7: 1 as an amplification of Deut. 33: 1. Moses is a mediating figure, transmitting divine blessings to the people through his own person. His mediating role, however, does not hypostatize him as a divine power. His status as a σοφ, a perfectly wise man, grants him a ‘privileged position, strictly speaking neither God nor man but rather occupying a midway position’ (1988: 62–3). Behind Philo’s characterization of Moses lies the Greek application of θε to the sage, the ruler, and the benefactor. These three applications are closely connected. Indeed, the sage had long since taken over the attributes of the ideal king as both philosopher and world ruler. Among the Stoics the wise man, according to Diogenes Laertius, was θε# κα βασιλευ´ (Diog. Laert. 7.117 ff.). On the authority of Exodus 7: 1, Moses, the supremely wise man, could be called θεο κα βασιλευ´, ruling first over his body and his passions, then over the fool, and finally over the whole of nature through sharing in God’s cosmic rule (Sacr. 9; Mut. 128; Det. 162; V. Mos. 1. 158; cf. Runia 1988: 55). Elsewhere Philo also appeals to the view that a benefactor may be reckoned as a god to his beneficiaries: For one must be content if it be granted to him to follow right reasoning himself, but to procure the good gift for others is what only a greater, more perfect, truly God-inspired soul can promise, and the possessor of such a soul will with good

64

The Jewish Paradigm

reason be called a god . . .9 The chief characteristic of a god is to be a benefactor. (Mut. 128–9; trans. Colson, modified)

This influence, however, should not be given undue weight. Set against it is Philo’s implacable hostility to pagan deification, which is the only context–– with one possible exception––in which he uses the relevant technical terms.10 He protests against the deification of the heavenly bodies, of the four primary principles, even of reason itself (Conf. 173; Dec. 53; Spec. Leg. 1. 344). He ridicules the Egyptian deification of animals (Dec. 79). And he attacks the ‘most godless deification’ of Gaius with a passion worthy of a Maccabee (Leg. ad Gaium 77). Under the influence of Euhemerism, however, he does at least find it intelligible that the Egyptians should have deified the Nile, and he is sympathetic to the honours which were accorded to Augustus in view of his enormous benefactions to mankind (V. Mos. 2. 195; Leg. ad Gaium 143 ff.). Nevertheless, it is clear that he saw nothing in pagan deification or its terminology which could be used to illuminate the religion of the Jews. In conclusion we may say that in spite of a doctrine of the soul which is thoroughly Greek, and in spite of a predicative use of the word θε, which is also thoroughly Greek, Philo is unwilling to say that Moses is a god except by title or analogy. And without biblical authority he would not have ventured to say even that––so eager is he to qualify the statement––even though Moses shared in the kingship and glory of God through his ascent of Mount Sinai. The rational soul, having been created in the image of the Image, has a natural kinship with God. It can reach up towards him through philosophy, which raises the mind from the sensible to the intelligible, through the moral struggle, which strives to attain απα´θεια, and through mysticism, which seeks to free the nous from the shackles of the body by means of ecstasy in this life or by soaring up beyond the heavens after death. Yet Philo stresses repeatedly that although human beings can attain divinity in the sense of incorporeality or immortality, it is impossible for them to become gods. For all his Platonism he maintains the biblical gulf between the human and the divine, depreciating the ability of intellectual and moral effort on their own to raise the soul to God. There is a suggestion that through God’s grace human beings can be given a share in the divine attributes in so far as they are 9 θε is the reading of the manuscripts but is printed by Cohn and Wendland with some hesitation. Colson and Whitaker (LCL) read θεο – ‘man of God’. Philo, however, as he shows in his discussion of the title ‘man of God’ (Mut. 126–9), finds it to be more or less equivalent to ‘god’. Cf. Goodenough 1935: 227; Meeks 1968: 357. 10 In QE 2. 40, R. Marcus (LCL, Philo Suppl. 2) translates from the Armenian: ‘This (i.e. Exod. 24: 12) signifies that a holy soul is divinised by ascending not to the air or to the ether or to a region (which is) higher than all but to (a region) above the heavens. And beyond the world there is no place but God,’ and notes in respect of ‘divinised’: ‘Arm. astouacanal usually renders θεοσθαι, a word that seems not to occur elsewhere in Philo. Perhaps the original here was θεοφορεσθαι.’ It seems to me more likely to have been θειοσθαι, which Philo does use once (Ebr. 110) to signify participation in incorruption.

The Jewish Paradigm

65

capable of receiving them.11 There is also a mention of the unending concord and union that come from cleaving to God (Post. C. 12). But this is as far as Philo is prepared to go.12

3. Palestinian Judaism While Philo was composing his commentaries and treatises in Alexandria for the Greek-speaking Diaspora, other writers in Palestine were producing a different kind of literature. There was, of course, no rigid distinction between the Judaism (or rather, Judaisms) of Palestine and that of the Hellenized Diaspora. On the one hand, Jewish writers in Greek had no wish for the most part to break with their religious tradition; on the other, the Palestinian homeland itself was not immune to the penetration of Greek culture and ideas. Nevertheless, since the fourth century bce certain circles in Palestine had been responsible for a number of developments which owed very little to Hellenism, namely, the peopling of heaven with the angelic orders, the revelation of divine mysteries to a representative human figure, and the participation of the elect in a new exalted life beyond the grave. These are the developments that we encounter in Apocalyptic literature and the sectarian writings of Khirbet Qumran. Apocalyptic originated in the pluralistic age of the Second Temple, the age of Middle Judaism. In the early years of this period the two main forms of Palestinian Judaism were the Zadokite and the Enochic.13 Zadokite Judaism, the product of the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, was centred on the worship of the Temple at Jerusalem and was controlled by the priestly elite. Enochic Judaism first appears in the third century bce among the same elite, perhaps as a reaction to the Hellenization of the Zadokite priesthood. The name Enochic has been given to it because of the importance it attached to a number of ancient traditions which accorded a central role to Enoch as a mediator between heaven and earth. These traditions were collected in the five separate works which together came to make up 1 Enoch.14 After the 11 Dillon (1983: 223) sees a foreshadowing in Philo of the doctrine of ‘suitability for reception’ which we find in the later Neoplatonists. 12 So Dodd 1953; Chadwick 1970; Holladay 1977; Runia 1988; Helleman 1990. Contra: Goodenough 1935; Meeks 1968; Tiede 1972. 13 I have drawn my sketch of Middle Judaism from Boccaccini 1998 (cf. the useful diagram on p. xxii) and Sacchi 1994. Note, however, Adler’s warning about the difficulty of locating Apocalyptic literature in any particular kind of Judaism: ‘Because most of the Jewish apocalypses received a generally unfavourable reception in post-70 Judaism, there does not exist a developed tradition of Jewish interpretation to contextualize these documents or provide a framework for their analysis’ (VanderKam and Adler 1996: 1). 14 In chronological order (as given by VanderKam in VanderKam and Adler 1996: 33) these works are: (i) The Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–8), 3rd cent. bce; (ii) The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), 3rd cent. bce; (iii) The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–108), 2nd cent. bce; (iv) The Book of Dreams (1 Enoch 83–90), 2nd cent. bce; (v) The Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71), 1st cent. bce/ce.

66

The Jewish Paradigm

Maccabean crisis, Zadokite Judaism divided into Sadduceeism and Pharisaism, while Enochic Judaism gave rise to Essenism. The relationship of Qumran Judaism to these is disputed. The majority of scholars see Khirbet Qumran as an Essene settlement, perhaps even the headquarters of the movement, but there are a number of difficulties to this view. Although the teachings of the Qumran library share the anti-Zadokite character and dualist world view of the Essenes (many fragments of 1 Enoch were found in Cave 4), they differ markedly in emphasizing both an individual predestination and an inaugurated eschatology. Perhaps the most satisfactory explanation is that the Qumranites were indeed Essenes, but a marginal community that had broken away from mainstream Essenism (Boccaccini 1998: esp. 187–8). Recent studies have shown that the doctrine of a transcendent life beyond the grave developed surprisingly early in Judaism, owing little, if anything, to Hellenism (Sacchi 1994: 402–14). Already in the Book of the Watchers (third century bce) Enoch is shown the place of the dead, where the spirits of the righteous, separated from the spirits of sinners, dwell near ‘a bright spring of water’ (1 Enoch 22: 2, 9). Indeed, it seems to have been the hope of immortality held out by Enochic Judaism, rather than any ideas drawn from Hellenism, that provoked the scornful claim of Qoheleth that ‘man has no advantage over the beasts . . . all go to one place . . . all turn to dust again’ (Eccles. 3: 19–20; cf. 9: 10). But Qoheleth’s was a voice from the past, whose old-fashioned conviction that human life ended in annihilation would survive only among the Sadducees. By the time of the Book of Parables, the latest part of 1 Enoch (turn of the ce), Enochic Judaism held that the righteous dead would share in the divine life itself. Their faces would shine with the light of God (1 Enoch 38: 4) and they would be clothed with the garments of glory (1 Enoch 62: 16). This was different in its corporate emphasis from the immortality of Hellenistic Judaism, which was a reward bestowed by God on an individual basis. It was different, too, from the idea of bodily resurrection which became a characteristic doctrine of Pharisaism. The doctrine of angels also has its roots in primitive Hebrew religion. From their origins as members of the council of the gods which surrounded Yahweh, the angels, under the influence partly of Greek daemonic theory, but even more of Persian angelology, underwent a remarkable elaboration in Apocalyptic literature (Russell 1964: 235–62). In the heavenly court, or temple, they performed a priestly role, rendering worship to God. With regard to men, their function was twofold. First, they acted as a bridge between God and his creation, governing the world with a delegated power; secondly, they served as an explanation of suffering, either as angelic ministers who tested human beings (in the Zadokite tradition), or as fallen demons who warred against them (in Enochic Judaism). In the Hellenistic and Roman periods their mediatorial role was expanded further. Enoch, Moses, and other heroes

The Jewish Paradigm

67

of the faith were represented as ascending to heaven to participate with the angels in the heavenly liturgy. In their wake they drew up the faithful remnant of Israel, the promotion of the resurrected righteous to a community of life with the angels coming, in a non-philosophizing Jewish milieu, to form a parallel to Christian deification with important implications for both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Among the most powerful eschatological images in Apocalyptic literature are those of God on his heavenly throne surrounded by his angelic throng, or even more awesomely in his fiery chariot, the Merkabah, which are first met with in the vision of Micaiah (1 Kgs. 22: 19–22) and can be traced through Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 to Daniel 7 and the theophanies of 1 Enoch 14, 46, and 71 (Black 1976: 57–73; Himmelfarb 1993: 9–28). In 1 Kings, Isaiah, and Ezekiel the theophany is the setting for the commissioning of the prophet. But in Daniel 7 the vision itself becomes an integral part of the prophet’s message, which focuses on the destiny of the faithful remnant who have endured persecution. These will ‘receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever’ (7: 18). But there is mention, too, of ‘one like a son of man’ who comes to the Ancient of Days with clouds of heaven and is also given ‘dominion and glory and kingdom’ (7: 13–14). The identity of this figure is disputed. He has been seen variously as symbolizing Michael, the guardian angel of Israel (Collins 1995), or the historic Jewish people (Di Lella in Hartman and Di Lella 1978: 90–2), or both simultaneously (Collins 1974b) or in successive stages. Matthew Black goes so far as to say that ‘what Daniel was contemplating was nothing less than the apotheosis of Israel in the end-time, a “deification”, as it were, of the “saints of the Most High” ’ (Black 1976: 61). The simplest explanation, however, is the most satisfactory.15 The ‘one like a son of man’ is an angel, probably Michael, entrusted with the protection of the people of Israel. Only later, in Christian tradition and in the Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71) does he become a Messianic figure, the Elect of God. Ezekiel and Daniel are models for later Apocalyptic writers of scenes set in the heavenly court. The mysterious figure of Enoch, who was rapt to heaven in Gen. 5: 24, came to play a central role. In the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) he is portrayed as lifted up into heaven (14: 8) into the presence of the Merkabah (14: 18–25) to mediate between angels and God (15: 1 to 16: 4; cf. Gen. 6: 1–4). In the Book of Parables, which draws on Daniel 7, his role is extended. He no longer performs a merely mediatory function but is invested with Messianic authority. The climax comes in chapter 71, where Enoch, having ascended into the heavens and seen the sons of the holy angels treading on flames of fire, is identified with the Son of Man. At the end of time, seated on the throne of his glory, Enoch will judge both 15 It might be added that the discrediting of the notion of ‘corporate personality’ (Rogerson 1970) has made the idea of the Son of Man as a representative figure one that must be treated cautiously.

68

The Jewish Paradigm

angels and men (69: 29). In other texts other patriarchs and heroes, though not cast in the Messianic role, will also have thrones in heaven. Isaac is told by an angel that a throne has been set up for him close to his father Abraham and that his son Jacob’s lot ‘will surpass that of all the others in the whole of God’s creation’ (Test. of Isaac 2: 5–6). Job silences Elihu and his companions with the boast that he will show them his throne with all ‘its glory and its splendour at the right hand of the Father’ (Test. of Job 33: 2–3). One of the most remarkable of these ascents is found not in an Apocalyptic text but in a Jewish Hellenistic play on the life of Moses, entitled Exagoge, which was written in Greek verse in the second century bce by an Alexandrian Jew called Ezekiel (Jacobson 1983: lines 68–82; cf. Runia 1988: 48–52; Collins 1995: 50–3). In this case it is a dream that is recounted rather than a real ascent (which, as Runia says, demythologizes the account) but when Moses arrives before the throne of God, God does not simply set him on a throne but actually descends from his own throne and puts Moses on it in his place (lines 74–6). The whole cosmos then spreads itself before him and the stars fall on their knees and adore him (lines 79–80). ‘The implication’, as Runia points out, ‘is that Moses is actually deified’ (1988: 51). Neither Philo nor any of the Apocalyptic texts goes quite so far as this in their exaltation of a biblical personage, although the heroes, enthroned in glory, do share in the rule of God. In Apocalyptic literature, however, it is not only the great men of the past who will be assigned heavenly thrones. Enoch says that each of those who love God’s holy name ‘will be set on the throne of his honour’ (108: 12). The righteous, admitted into the heavenly court, will also be enthroned with the patriarchs and heroic figures of Israel. The association of the righteous with the heavenly liturgy of the angels is a particularly striking feature of the sectarian writings of the Qumran community. One of the central tenets of the community was that its members were predestined to transcend death: ‘For God has chosen them for an everlasting covenant and the glory of Adam shall be theirs’ (1QS 4: 24; cf. 1QH 3: 5).16 The glory awaiting the Qumranites was not a new state but a continuation of the life of the community. Each member under the Teacher of Righteousness and the sages of the community had been ‘shaped from dust for the everlasting Council’. His spirit had been cleansed ‘that it may stand with the host of the Holy Ones, and that it may enter into a community with the congregation of the Sons of Heaven’ (1QH 3: 5; cf. 1QH 11: 7 and 4Q181). These Sons of Heaven are the angels who constitute the heavenly court. On a number of occasions they are called ‘gods’ (elohim or elim) after Psalm 82: 1: ‘elohim has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgement’ (11Q13. 10). As ‘gods’ they are organized under Michael or Melchizedek (1QM18) for the service of God 16

Only one text out of 813 testifies to belief in the resurrection (Vermes 1995: 63).

The Jewish Paradigm

69

(4Q400), for combat in the coming Messianic war, and for the praise and adoration of God (4Q403 i. i. 30–46; 4Q405 19abcd). And those who have been elected to the community participate with them in each of these activities. For the Qumran congregation the boundaries between heaven and earth are permeable. Indeed, on occasion they dissolve away entirely, as some of the hymns, in particular, make explicit: My eyes have gazed on that which is eternal, on wisdom concealed from men, on knowledge and wise design (hidden) from the sons of men; on a fountain of righteousness and on a storehouse of power, on a spring of glory (hidden) from the assembly of flesh. God has given them to His chosen ones as an everlasting possession, and has caused them to inherit the lot of the Holy Ones. He has joined their assembly to the Sons of Heaven to be a Council of the Community, a foundation of the Building of Holiness, and eternal Plantation throughout all ages to come.

So proclaims the hymn that concludes the Community Rule (1QS 11: 5–9; trans. Vermes 1995: 87). Another liturgical text takes up the same theme: Thou hast cleansed a perverse spirit of great sin that it may stand with the host of the Holy Ones, and that it may enter into community with the congregation of the Sons of Heaven. Thou hast allotted to man an everlasting destiny amidst the spirits of knowledge . . . (1QH 3: 21–2; trans. Vermes 1995: 198)

The inaugurated eschatology of these passages is characteristic of the liturgical worship of the Qumran community.17 This is accompanied by a keen sense of the glorious destiny of the sectaries in contrast with that of the wicked. The latter will suffer everlasting damnation and eternal torment (1QS 4). But with regard to themselves: ‘He caused some of the sons of the world to draw near (Him) . . . to be counted with Him in the com[munity of the “g]ods” as a congregation of holiness in service for eternal life and (sharing) the lot of His holy ones’ (4Q181; trans. Vermes 1995: 183). One figure, however, seems called to an even more glorious destiny above that of his fellows. In a text which the editor, Maurice Baillet, called ‘The Song of Michael and the Just’ (4QMa; Vermes 1995: 147; cf. Smith 1990; Collins 1995; Abegg 1997) the speaker claims confidently: ‘my glory is incomparable, and apart from me none is exalted. None shall come against me, for I have taken 17

See, too, the Songs for the Holocaust of the Sabbath (4Q400–407; Vermes 1995: 254–63).

70

The Jewish Paradigm

my seat . . . in the heavens . . . I shall be reckoned with gods and established in the holy congregation.’18 Who is this speaker? Vermes repeats Baillet’s attribution without comment. Morton Smith, however, rightly argues against the speaker’s being Michael (1990). It is clearly a human being who claims to have been raised to a seat in the heavens, a human being plausibly identified either with the Teacher of Righteousness himself, the founder of the Qumran community (Abegg 1997), or with ‘a teacher of the first century bce who saw himself, like Moses, enthroned in the heavens and issuing teachings and rulings of irresistible power’ (Collins 1995: 55). If the leader of the Qumran community is seen as a new Moses, it is so that he can lead others to the fulfilment of the angelic life. The theme of light is closely connected with this. In the Book of Daniel the writer had said that the wise ones, the maskilim or spiritual elite, ‘shall shine like the brightness of the firmament. . . like the stars for ever’ (12: 3). This motif, which perhaps draws on Greek ideas of astral immortality, reappears frequently in later writings. The Epistle of Enoch, echoing Daniel, says that the righteous will ‘shine like the lights of heaven’ (1 Enoch 104: 2; cf. 108: 12–15). In 2 Baruch, which was composed in about 100 ce, shortly after the destruction of the Qumran community, those who are justified ‘will be transformed so that they will look like angels’ (51: 5): For in the heights of the world shall they dwell, And they shall be made like the angels, And be made equal to the stars; And they shall be changed into whatever form they will, From beauty into holiness, And from light into the splendour of glory. (51: 10)

Indeed, their splendour will even exceed that of the angels (51: 12). For it is nothing short of a sharing in the glory of God. According to the Book of Parables, ‘the righteous will be in the light of the sun, and the chosen in the light of eternal life’ (1 Enoch 58: 3). The author of the Dead Sea Hymns Scroll expresses the confidence at the end of his work that he will ‘stand [before Thee for ever] in the everlasting abode, illumined with perfect Light for ever’ (1QH 18: 29; trans. Vermes 1995: 236). Insofar as we can use the term ‘deification’ with regard to Apocalyptic literature and the writings of the Qumran community, it expresses the assimilation of the elect to the life of the ‘gods’ of the heavenly court. There is no innate divinity in any part of the human person simply waiting to be discovered. We are nothing but clay and dust (1QH 10: 6; 18: 26). But the elect, through obedience to the Covenant and participation in the cosmic liturgy, 18

The translation draws on Vermes 1995 and Collins 1995.

The Jewish Paradigm

71

can come to share with the angels in the glory of God. The disasters of the first and second centuries, however, were to sweep away not only the fragile communities of the Essenes but even the great Hellenistic Jewish community of Alexandria itself. The literature of Hellenistic and Enochic Judaism therefore came to be preserved by the Christian Church (which had its origin in these versions of Judaism) rather than by the Rabbinic tradition, which grew out of Pharisaism. Yet amongst the teachers of the new Rabbinic age there were a few who continued to be deeply influenced by stories of heavenly journeys and visionary experiences encountered in Apocalyptic. 4. The Rabbinic Tradition Since Gershom Scholem’s influential book on Jewish mysticism (1955), the heavenly journey of the yored merkavah, the seer who ascends to the vision of the throne-chariot of God, has dominated the study of that body of mystical writings of the Talmudic period known as the Hekhalot literature.19 Scholem opposed those who wanted to see a Gnostic influence in Merkabah mysticism. The yored merkavah, in his view, was not, like the Gnostic, assimilated to the object of his contemplation but simply beheld the vision. The gulf between man and God therefore remained profound. Scholem, in turn, was opposed by Elliot Wolfson (1974), who agreed that Hekhalot mysticism was not Gnostic in character, but argued that Scholem was assuming a Neoplatonic idea of union with the divine as the only model of unitive spiritual experience and was therefore making too strong a divide between the mystic and God. In the Hekhalot model ‘the enthronement of the mystic should be understood as a form of quasi-deification or angelification, in line with the older tradition expressed in apocalyptic literature concerning the transformation of individuals into angelic beings’ (Wolfson 1974: 84–5). The gap between the human and the divine was thus much narrower than Scholem would allow. More recently, Peter Schäfer has drawn attention to several hitherto neglected aspects of Hekhalot mysticism (1992). First, the yored merkavah’s heavenly journey, the ‘Himmelsreise der Seele’, actually occupies a very small part in the literature. A more important aspect is magical adjuration. The reality of God resides in his name. Whoever knows the names of God therefore knows the Torah and, by manipulating the names, in some way has God in his power. The same is true with regard to the angels. By means of adjuration the angels are made to appear on earth and reveal their secrets to men. 19 These writings, described by Gruenwald as ‘short technical guides for mystics’ (1988: 99), include Hekhalot Rabbati (‘The Greater Palaces’), Hekhalot Zutarti (‘The Lesser Palaces’), Ma’aseh Merkavah (‘The Working of the Chariot’), Merkavah Rabbah (‘The Great Chariot’) and the Third or Hebrew Book of Enoch, properly called Sefer Hekhalot.

72

The Jewish Paradigm

Magical adjuration thus ‘allows the yored merkavah to dismantle the borders between heaven and earth’ (Schäfer 1992: 166).20 Secondly, the purpose of the heavenly journey is not just the vision of the Merkabah but participation in the cosmic liturgy. That is why the yored merkavah is set on a throne of glory. But he does not simply remain there rapt in adoration. By returning from heaven and reporting his experience to his companions, he unites angels and human beings in a single liturgy of praise. The reasons for the appearance of this type of mysticism in the Tannaitic period (the first two centuries ce) have been the subject of some speculation. Ithamar Gruenwald sees Merkabah mysticism as a parallel development to Gnosticism, both of them drawing on Jewish Apocalypticism (with its hostility to the Jerusalemite priesthood) and both seeking to satisfy the desire of their adherents for an immediate experience of the divine through an anticipation (transitory in the case of the yored merkavah) of the blessed life to come. Gruenwald is not persuaded that the cultic changes brought about by the destruction of the Second Temple are sufficient to account for the appearance of Merkabah mysticism, although he does suspect that initially it may have arisen as a reaction against the prevailing eschatology (1988: 122). ‘It is no mere coincidence’, he suggests, ‘that the first rabbinic sage about whom it is reported that he discussed matters relating to the res mysticae with his students (R. Johanan ben Zakkai) also symbolizes in his personality and activity the break with the priestly halakhic tradition which prevailed in Jerusalem’ (1988: 141). Schäfer posits a loss of confidence in Merkabah circles in the ultimate revelation of God that was supposed to come about through the study of the Torah. More direct means were sought to induce the immediate experience of God. The Holy Name was invoked and by theurgic adjuration ‘the unbearable period of time between the revelation at Sinai and the time to come is abolished’ (Schäfer 1992: 163). Thus the whole of revelation, in both its realized and its future stages, ‘is concentrated in the immediate experiencing by the yored merkavah of the simultaneously hidden and revealed God’ (ibid.). A recent contributor to the debate, Nathaniel Deutsch, identifies the central problem as that of how both Gnostics and Merkabah mystics encountered the sacred (1995: 75–9). He believes (contra Scholem) that Merkabah mysticism was in fact extremely rich in attempts to bridge the ‘gulf’ between the human and the divine, and that for the appreciation of these attempts a typological approach is more helpful than cut-and-dried 20 This should be distinguished from Kabbalah, the other type of Jewish mysticism which emerged some centuries after Merkabah and shows evidence of Gnostic and Neoplatonic influence. In Kabbalah the central place is taken not by the ‘Himmelsreise der Seele’ but by ‘the contemplation of the ten metaphysical sefirot, or ten emanations which comprise in metaphysical realms the fullness (technically the Pleroma) of the revealed Deity’ (Gruenwald 1988: 133). The intention of such contemplation is to effect the reunification of the soul with its divine origin. On this see Idel 1988.

The Jewish Paradigm

73

philosophical categorization (1995: 153). In Merkabah mysticism the types and images of union with God are anthropomorphic, because God and man share the same anthropomorphic form: the image of God is found in the human body, not in the soul alone. Hence the corporeal imagery of bodily ascent, of sitting on thrones, of wearing crowns, of being clothed in garments of light, which provides a vivid alternative to the intellectualizing Neoplatonic model of unitive experience. The implications of the anthropomorphic image of God in Rabbinic Judaism are evident in the exalted status of Adam and Eve, and consequently in the potentially exalted status of the human race as a whole. An important text in this connection is Psalm 82: 6–7, which by this time is understood to have been addressed not to angels or corrupt human judges but to the entire people of the Covenant. The only Tannaitic discussion of the text is the following passage from Sifre to Deuteronomy: 21 R. Simai22 used to say further: Both the soul and the body of creatures created from heaven are from heaven; both the soul and body of those creatures created from the earth are from earth, except for that one creature, man, whose soul is from heaven and whose body is from the earth. Therefore, if man lives by the Torah and performs the will of his Father in heaven, he is like the heavenly creatures, as it is said, ‘I said, Ye are godlike beings, and all of you sons of the Most High’ (Ps. 82: 6). But if he does not live by the Torah and does not perform the will of his Father in heaven, he is like the creatures of the earth, as it is said, ‘Nevertheless ye shall die like Adam’ (Ps. 82: 7). (Sifre Deut. 306; trans. Hammer)

The author, like many Rabbis, took the pre-existence of the soul for granted, but what entitles human beings to be called ‘godlike beings’, or literally, ‘gods’, is not the heavenly origin of one part of their nature; it is their observance of the Torah. Obedience to the Law confers immortality; disobedience brings death. And as with Jewish writers in Greek, immortality is properly a divine state which conforms human beings to the angelic life. A similar emphasis is found in the Amoraic period (third to fifth centuries ce). The amoraim generally interpret Psalm 82: 6–7 as originally addressed to the Israelites in the desert on the occasion of their worshipping the golden calf. If they had not sinned, they would have remained immortal, for had they not eaten the manna which made them like the angels? But their sin of idolatry made them subject to death.23 One of the earlier collections of midrashim, however, Leviticus Rabbah, applies verse 6 to Adam and Eve: ‘ “On the wings of the heights of the city” refers to the fact that the Holy 21 Sifre (from the plural of Aramaic sifra, ‘writing’, or ‘book’) is a Tannaitic midrash on Numbers and Deuteronomy. It was a product of the school of R. Akiba. 22 R. Simai was a teacher of the early second century ce. 23 Abod Zarah 5a; Midrash Rabbah on Exod. 32: 1; 32: 7; Midrash Rabbah on Lev. 4: 1; Midrash Rabbah on Num. 7: 4; Midrash Rabbah on Deut. 7: 12; Midrash Rabbah on Eccles. 3: 16. 1. Cf. Midrash Rabbah on Ruth, Proem. 1; Midrash Rabbah on Song of Songs 1: 2, 5.

74

The Jewish Paradigm

One, blessed be He, enabled them to fly, and attributed to them divine qualities, as it is said, “And I said: Ye are godlike beings” ’ (Midrash Rabbah on Lev. 11: 1 and 3). The point the author makes, however, is similar. Adam and Eve were created to be like the angels, if not superior to them, but fell through sin. The effects of the Fall are reversed by the observance of the Torah, which gives the righteous a share in the holiness of God so that they can even be called by his name. More than one sage is reported to have said: ‘The righteous will in time come to be called by the name of the Holy One, blessed be He’ (Babra Bathra 75b). Morton Smith has suggested that the Roman rulercult might have had some influence in encouraging such deification by name (1958: 475–81). But this seems unlikely. It is not necessary to go outside the Jewish tradition to find the bestowal on the righteous of a special name incorporating the name of God.24 Man had been created with a share in the divine glory: in one tradition the angels were actually commanded to worship Adam (Life of Adam and Eve 14). He fell from this eminence but even in the mainstream tradition the study of the Torah (which in Rabbinic piety is not simply a means to an end but communicates the personal experience of God) enables him to recover that share of divine glory which was lost through the Fall, that is, to assimilate himself to the life of the angels or the ‘gods’. In Merkabah circles the study of the Torah could be short-circuited; the promised assimilation to the life of the ‘gods’ could be anticipated. By magical adjuration and heavenly ascent the yored merkavah could ascend in a state of ecstasy through six magnificent halls or palaces (the hekhalot) to the vision of God’s throne-chariot (the merkavah) in the seventh hall. The vision did not result in any inappropriate familiarity with God. The response evoked by the sight of his transcendent glory was rather one of prostration, fear, and worship. For the unprepared it was even dangerous. The famous story of the four Rabbis who entered Paradise to the detriment of three of them, only R. Akiba returning unharmed and in his right mind, may belong to this tradition.25 But for those who were morally and spiritually attuned to the heavenly world, the prostration and fear brought about by contact with the sacred was accompanied by a sense of exaltation and joy. Merkabah mysticism was nourished above all by the Enochic literature that was so central to Apocalyptic. From the period of the amoraim comes the Third or Hebrew Book of Enoch, which Odeberg dated to the latter half of the third century (1928: 45) but which is now thought to belong to the fifth 24

saint.

Cf. Jer. 23: 6; 33: 16; Amos 9: 12. What is true of Israel may be extended to apply to the Rabbinic

25 On this see Halperin 1988: 1–37 and Schäfer 1988: 238–43. Both scholars argue that this was originally a Rabbinic parable, and only much later was taken to refer to ecstatic journeys to the third or seventh heaven in the manner of St Paul.

The Jewish Paradigm

75

or sixth century. It is cast in the form of an account of R. Ishmael’s ascent to the seventh heaven. On the way he is met by Enoch (now also called Metatron), who guides him to the throne of God. Enoch’s glorification in this work is carried to even greater lengths than in the earlier Enochic literature. God has made him ‘a garment of glory’ (12: 1); he wears a crown ‘like unto the light of the globe of the sun’ (12: 3). These signify the transformed nature of those who are admitted into the presence of God and find parallels in the elect generally. R. Nathan ha-Bavli, for example, a tanna of the middle of the second century, is reported to have described the righteous in the world to come sitting with crowns on their heads and ‘nourished by the effulgence of the Shekinah’.26 But Enoch is associated even more closely than this with the divine glory. He says to R. Ishmael: ‘And he called me the lesser yhwh in the presence of His heavenly household; as it is written (Exod. 23: 21): “For my name is in him” ’ (12: 5). The dwelling of the divine name in Enoch-Metatron makes him God’s representative, even a manifestation of the Shekinah, so that he becomes almost a divine hypostasis to be worshipped by the angels (3 Enoch 14: 5). Later Rabbinic prohibition of the worship of Enoch suggests that some Jewish groups actually did treat him as a manifestation of Yahweh.27 Another hero who was called by the name of God was Moses. In the Tanhuma, which belongs to the second half of the fourth century, it is said that Moses was called a god (cf. Exod. 7: 1) because God ‘apportions some of his glory to those who fear him according to his glory’.28 A text from the Talmud says that it was as a man that Moses ascended to God on Mount Sinai and as a ‘god’ that he descended, his face shining, to communicate the law to the people29 and another text that when he went up Mount Sinai, ‘he ascended from human status to that of the angels’.30 In Moses was restored the glory that had been lost by Adam. He was, as it were, the prototype of a new humanity. Rabbinic Judaism in the Roman period struggled with a number of problems made all the more acute by the loss of the Temple sacrifices and the failure of Messianic expectations. How do you approach a transcendent God? How do you encounter the sacred? How do you attain the blessedness of the just? The answer to these in mainstream Rabbinic Judaism was through the study and observance of the Torah. Obedience to the Torah could restore in the believer the community of life with God which Adam had once possessed. Amongst the Rabbis there were some, however, who 26 Abot de R. Nathan i. 8, quoted by Moore 1927: ii. 392–3; cf. Rabbah, a Babylonian amora of the early fourth century, Berakhoth 17a. 27 On Metatron see Segal 1977: 64–73 and Gruenwald 1988: 240–8. 28 Tanhuma on Num. 10: 1–2, quoted by Meeks 1968: 356. 29 Pesikta R. K. 32f. 1986, quoted by Meeks 1968: 357. 30 Memor Marqah, trans. Macdonald 206, quoted by Meeks 1968: 360.

76

The Jewish Paradigm

looked to more esoteric means in order to overcome the divide which separated the human from the divine. To what extent Merkabah mysticism was based on personal ecstatic experience is a matter for debate. Scholem took it as axiomatic that the literature must have developed from the actual experience of ecstatic ascent. C. R. A. Morray-Jones, who accepts Scholem with modifications, sums up this position in the following words: These traditions were associated with exegesis of Scriptural accounts of visions of the enthroned deity (Daniel 7, Isaiah 6 and, pre-eminently, Ezekiel 1) but it is probable that visionary-mystical practices were also involved. Such traditions were inherited from apocalyptic circles and enthusiastically developed by some Tannaim, but were opposed by others, mainly because the same traditions were being developed by groups whom they regarded as heretical, including the various forms of Christianity and Gnosticism. The Hekhalot writings represent the development of these traditions within rabbinism. (1992: 1)

Attractive as this is, the evidence for it is slight. The only personal account we have of a mystical ascent is that of St Paul (2 Cor. 12: 1–5) until Hai Gaon’s instructions 800 years later on how to induce the experience with the aid of posture and breathing techniques (Segal 1995; cf. J. M. Scott 1997). The existence of Apocalyptic circles deeply immersed in spiritual practices in the first centuries of the Common Era is largely conjectural. A recent study of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic regards the production of Apocalyptic works as primarily a literary endeavour (Himmelfarb 1993: 95–114). David Halperin and Peter Schäfer are equally sceptical about the experiential basis for Merkabah mysticism. In Halperin’s view the Merkabah in the Tannaitic period was the subject of synagogue sermons, not the stimulus for mystical practice. It was only in Babylonia in the fourth century that ‘expounding the Merkabah stopped being a matter of bible study alone’ and ‘took on overtones of ecstatic experience, of journeys to realms filled with strange and dangerous sights’ (Halperin 1988: 37). Schäfer suggests a liturgical setting in the synagogue for the accounts of heavenly ascent: ‘Like adjuration, the heavenly journey is a ritual, a liturgical act’ (Schäfer 1988: 294). In his view it was the very recitation of the narratives that produced a sense of communion with God. Whether literary fiction or spiritual journals of mystical ascent, however, these texts were to have a profound influence on the esoteric tradition of Rabbinic Judaism.

5. Influence on Christianity The Jewish paradigm is extremely rich and varied, ranging from the ethical/ allegorical ascents of the Hellenists to the accounts of heavenly journeys and angelic liturgies of Enochic Judaism. Its influence on Christianity is

The Jewish Paradigm

77

indisputable. Not only Philo but also the apocalypses ‘owe their survival almost entirely to early Christianity’ (VanderKam and Adler 1996: 1). The legacy of the Hellenists to the Church may be summed up as four philosophical propositions: (i) immortality is a gift from God, not an innate property of the soul; (ii) the human soul has a kinship with the divine glory, yet the gulf between man and God is never fully transcended; (iii) through moral progress the human soul may nevertheless come to participate in some of the divine attributes; (iv) on rare occasions the human mind even in this life may attain to an ecstatic encounter with God. The legacy of Enochic Judaism, by contrast, lends itself to summary more as a series of visual images: (i) the gifted seer may ascend to the awesome vision of the throne-chariot of God; (ii) the righteous dead will share in the divine life itself, clothed in the radiant garments of glory; (iii) the elect will be assimilated to the life of the angels, worshipping God and serving him in his immediate presence. These twin legacies were to be of fundamental importance in shaping the Christian approach to deification. Amongst Christians, the Platonizing theoreticians of the spiritual life were especially influenced by Hellenistic Judaism. Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, in particular, each owe a direct debt to Philo (Runia 1993: 132–83, 243–61). Through their treatises and biblical commentaries, Philo’s association of the creation of the human race in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1: 26) with the Platonic doctrine of likeness to God as the goal of the moral life (Theaet. 176b), his presentation of Moses as the perfect man mediating between the human and the divine, and his teaching on the philosophical, ethical, and mystical ascents of the mind to God became naturalized within the Eastern Christian spiritual tradition. The influence of Enochic Judaism, appealing as it did to a less learned audience, was more diffuse. Indeed, through its Apocalyptic literature it was, along with Daniel, the source of much of the fundamental imagery not only of deification but of Christian eschatology in general (cf. VanderKam and Adler 1996: 24–6). In connection with our narrower theme, Jewish Apocalyptic and its Christian derivative popularized within the early Church the idea of dream-visions and heavenly journeys, along with the notion of the assimilation of the righteous to the angelic life and their participation in divine glory. Through the passions of the martyrs of the second and third centuries and the lives and apophthegmata of the monastic saints of the fourth and fifth centuries these motifs became part of the stock-in-trade of the perfect Christian, for in the martyr and the monk the eschatological age is already anticipated here on earth. One of the most striking examples from this genre is Perpetua’s dream of her entry into a radiant place where she beheld a boundless light and heard the angels singing the Sanctus (Passio Perpet. 4. 2). The martyrs are shown such things, claims the author of this earliest account of a Christian martyrdom,

78

The Jewish Paradigm

‘because they are no longer human beings but already angels’ (Mart. Polycarp. 2. 3). In monastic literature assimilation of the perfect monk to the angelic life becomes a commonplace. Pachomius, for example, is credited with a heavenly visit during an ecstasy in which he witnessed Christ expounding the parables of the Gospel from a raised throne. Thereafter he was a man endowed with supernatural power. Whenever ‘he repeated the words and their commentary which he had heard from the Lord’s mouth, great lights would come out in his words, shooting out brilliant flashes’ (V. Pach. 86, trans. Veilleux, cited Frankfurter 1996: 178). Pachomius and those like him were men who had seen for themselves, who spoke with personal authority of the things of heaven. In the words of David Frankfurter: We can see the legacy of Jewish apocalyptic literature both in the character of the visions and the notion that the living holy man speaks from heaven itself. In this predominantly non-literate rural society the revelatory text has been replaced by the revelatory voice––indeed often under the same heroic name as the legendary seers of apocalypses: Elijah, Enoch, Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Abraham. (1996: 175)

And beyond the revelatory voice of the holy man lay simply his revelatory appearance. A number of the desert fathers were seen transfigured by a radiant light, inspiring fear and awe in the beholder.31 Merely to have beheld these men was to have encountered the divine. It is no coincidence that in the later Byzantine period the teachers and transmitters of the doctrine of deification were the hesychastic monks of Mount Athos, whose spiritual practices were directed specifically towards attaining the vision of the divine light. 31 For example, Pambo (Apoph. Pat. Pambo 12), Sisoes (Apoph. Pat. Sisoes 14), Silvanus (Apoph. Pat. Pambo 12), Joseph of Panephysis (Apoph. Pat. Joseph Pan. 7), and Onnuphrius (V. Onnuphrii 20).

4 The Earliest Christian Model Participatory Union with Christ

1. Pauline Christianity Paul is a unique figure. As a Diaspora Jew from a Romanized family, who had received a good Greek education yet was proud of his Jewishness and knew the Septuagint well, he resembles Philo.1 But in around 15 ce, when he was about twenty, he moved from Tarsus to Jerusalem, where he joined a circle of Pharisees, studying, according to Luke, under the great Rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22: 3).2 For the next fifteen years or so he applied himself zealously to acquiring a detailed knowledge of the Torah, both written and oral. At some stage he also conceived a strong antipathy to the new sect of ‘Christians’ or ‘Messianists’. The turning-point in his life came in about 33 ce when, for some unknown reason,3 he went to Damascus. There the appearance to him in a vision of the risen Christ produced in him a complete volte-face. The enemy of Christ became his most ardent propagandist. From that time Paul devoted himself to missionary work, first in the client kingdom of the Nabataean Arabs,4 and then in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire proper. Although he continued to regard himself as a devout Jew faithful to the covenant,5 his conviction that the Torah could only be interpreted correctly in the light of Christ,6 and that Christ was the new Adam who had Not only in his background but also in some aspects of his scriptural exegesis. See Chadwick 1965. My sketch of Paul’s early life is based on the reconstruction by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (1996). 3 Murphy-O’Connor discounts Luke’s version of the circumstances (Acts 9: 1–2) on the grounds of historical implausibility (1996: 65–70). 4 Murphy-O’Connor presents a persuasive argument (1996: 81–5) for not regarding Paul’s period in Arabia as a withdrawal for quiet reflection. 5 Bockmuehl points out that nowhere does Paul characterize his Damascus experience as a ‘conversion’, though some of his contemporaries may have viewed it differently (1990: 130–2). 6 Bockmuehl puts it well when he says that Christ became for Paul the ‘hermeneutical key’ or ‘ground rule’ ‘for the understanding of all revelation: whether in the gospel, in Scripture, or in creation’ (1990: 153). 1 2

80

The Earliest Christian Model

re-established an authentic humanity for the benefit of the whole human race, led him from the outset to direct his efforts towards the Gentiles. It is difficult to categorize the Christian communities that Paul founded in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. The models available from the contemporary Graeco-Roman world include the private household, the voluntary cultic association, the Jewish synagogue and the philosophical or rhetorical school (Meeks 1983: 75–84). Pauline groups certainly met in private houses – the κκλησα κατ  ο1κον of so-and-so was the fundamental unit.7 With their initiatory rite and ritual meal they operated like voluntary associations.8 They had certain features in common with the Jewish communities in their cities, although they did not adopt the terminology and offices of the synagogue. In many respects they were also like the circles that gathered around charismatic teachers. Paul does not appear to have run a formal didaskaleion in the manner of Valentinus or Justin a century later, but it is reported by Luke that when faced with expulsion from the synagogue at Ephesus, Paul withdrew with his group and continued his teaching for two years in the lecture-hall of a certain Tyrannus (Acts 19: 9).9 For their social composition the Pauline groups drew on a wide cross-section of society. They may not have included the distinguished citizens and philosophers who at about the same time were attending the lectures of Musonius Rufus, the Stoic moralist, at his school in Rome, but neither were they the nonentities that Paul for rhetorical effect made them out to be (cf. 1 Cor. 1: 27–8). Among their number in Corinth was the patroness (προστα´τι) Phoebe, the synagogue leader (αρχισυναγγο) Crispus, and the municipal treasurer (ο'κονµο τ πλεω) Erastus.10 Such ‘upwardly mobile’ people were probably not uncommon in early Christian circles. In Rome, for example, some of Paul’s people were members of the ‘household of Caesar’ (Phil. 4: 22), slaves or freedmen no doubt, but very likely important figures in the administration of the empire. Although Paul may originally have felt that he could leave the communities he had founded to the care of the Spirit while he moved on to new urban centres, problems soon arose which required his intervention either in person or through letters of instruction and admonition. All Paul’s writings are occasional. But although he responds to particular situations, he does not develop his ideas haphazardly. There is an underlying coherence in the letters which derives from the strongly christological and soteriological orientation 7 Meeks 1983: 75, citing H. Gülzow, ‘Die sozialen Gegebenheiten der altchristlichen Mission’, in H. Frohnes and U. W. Knorr (eds), Kirchengeschichte als Missionsgeschichte, vol. i, 1974, 198. 8 Cf. the cult association of the Iobacchi, Lane Fox 1986: 85–8. 9 Meeks 1983: 82. Paul’s letters show familiarity with the style and methods of professional rhetoricians; see Malherbe 1989. 10 Rom. 16: 2, 24; Acts 18: 8. On the prosopography of Paul’s communities see Meeks 1983: 55–63. A Latin inscription found at Corinth honouring an aedile named Erastus may refer to Paul’s Erastus.

The Earliest Christian Model

81

of his thinking. A fundamental theme that reflects this coherence is that of participatory union with Christ.11 The striking parallel Paul draws between Adam and Christ in Romans and 1 Corinthians has led some New Testament scholars to speak of an Adamic christology. Adam was a type of Christ (Rom. 5: 14), Christ the second Adam (1 Cor. 15: 45), in the sense that what was wrought by each had consequences for the entire human race. Solidarity in Adam is mirrored by solidarity in Christ, death ‘in Adam’ balanced against life ‘in Christ’ (1 Cor. 15: 22, 45). Christ inaugurated a new beginning for humankind, a new mode of human existence: ‘if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation’ (2 Cor. 5: 17). Another typological comparison drawn by Paul, focusing this time on inclusivity in terms of the covenant rather than our common humanity, is that between Christ and Abraham. In the letter to the Galatians he offers an exegesis of the promise given in Genesis to Abraham (Gen. 12: 7). Abraham was reckoned righteous through his faith in God, thus proving that the Law was not indispensable. God then made a promise that the land would be given to his seed (sperma). Paul lays great emphasis on the singular number of sperma. That single descendant who was to be the recipient of the divine promise was Christ. Those who would benefit from the promise can now do so through Christ. For Christ is not isolated from those who believe in him. ‘In Christ’, the unique son, all believers are ‘sons of God’ by faith. They have ‘put on’ Christ through baptism. They have become ‘one in Christ Jesus’ and share through him in the promise made to Abraham (Gal. 3: 26–9). The first to refer to the eschatological community as ‘sons of the living God’ was the eighth-century prophet, Hosea (Hos. 1: 10). The phrase expresses the intimacy with God enjoyed by members of the restored covenant relationship. Paul, although the first Jewish writer to use the term ‘adoption’ (υ2οθεσα), builds on these biblical foundations.12 Baptism into Christ is a new Exodus leading the people of God out of slavery to demonic powers and into the freedom of the heir to the promises that were made to Abraham and David. By adoption they become fellow-sons and fellow-heirs with Christ and consequently can address God as ‘Abba, Father!’ When Paul returns to the same image in Romans 8: 12–17, he brings to it some further insights. The agent of adoption is the Spirit, who is called the spirit of adoption in contrast with the spirit of slavery, and the joy of adoption is tempered by a contrast between present suffering and eschatological fulfilment. Participation in Christ is shown to have successive 11 The theme of participatory union in Paul was first given prominence by Deissmann 1957 (=1926) and Schweitzer 1957 (=1931) and its implications have been further drawn out by Bouttier 1966 (= 1962), Sanders 1977 and 1991, and Ziesler 1990. Its soteriological significance, however, has been denied or played down by Bultmann (1952), Conzelmann (1969), and Bornkamm (1971), for a critique of whose views see Sanders 1977: 453–4. 12 J. M. Scott (1992) has shown that Paul’s teaching on adoption owes nothing (apart from the word itself) to the Graeco-Roman background.

82

The Earliest Christian Model

stages: liberation from demonic powers, sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and finally sharing in his glory (Scott 1992: 221–66). This is brought out a little further on where Paul says: ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’ (Rom. 8: 22–3). Believers are not only adopted sons but heirs too. The sonship that they possess is only a firstfruit of the Spirit. For they share in the vanity and corruption to which the whole of creation is subject. The full manifestation of their sonship will only take place at the resurrection, when they will be liberated from vanity and corruption. The sonship of believers is therefore both a present reality and a future hope. The aspect of future hope is especially prominent in 1 Corinthians 15: 42– 58, where Paul sets out the destiny of the believer with poetic power and intensity. In response to the question: ‘How is the resurrection possible after the body has dissolved in the grave?’ he says that its dissolution, far from being a difficulty, is necessary before the resurrected body can be brought into being. The earthly body contributes nothing. This is underlined by the total contrast between the first Adam and the last, the former becoming ‘a living soul’ (ψυχ4ν ζσαν) ‘from the dust of the earth’, the latter ‘a life-giving spirit’ (πνεµα ζωοποιον) ‘from heaven’. If believers take their character from the last Adam, they too ‘shall bear the image of the heavenly’. The next question is: ‘What kind of body will we have?’ The answer is a body like that of Christ. ‘A body conditioned by ψυχ!, derived from Adam, will be transformed into a body conditioned by πνεµα, derived from Christ’ (Robertson and Plummer 1914: 374). Finally, in reply to the question: ‘What will happen to those who are still alive at the Second Coming?’ Paul asserts that the transition from psychikon to pneumatikon will be instantaneous and radical (cf. 1 Thess. 4: 13–17). Elsewhere Paul speaks of what is mortal being ‘swallowed up’ by life, suggesting vividly the irresistible power of life-in-itself (2 Cor. 5: 4). Here he uses the metaphor (derived from the baptismal rite) of putting on clothes, what is mortal ‘putting on’ immortality and incorruption in a way that implies the continuity of the human person in spite of the far-reaching effects of the change experienced. Paul speaks with confidence about the details of the eschatological life. Did he have access to Jewish esoteric traditions? The Gnostics certainly thought so.13 And Paul’s account of his ascent to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12: 2–4) lends support to their claims.14 But Paul only refers to his own experiScott 1997: 107; Pagels 1975; Stroumsa 1996: 4–5, 38, 68, 70. The first to draw attention to a possible connection between Paul and the Merkabah tradition was Scholem 1960: 14–19. Modern scholarship is divided, opinion ranging from the very cautious (Schäfer 1986) to the confident assertion that Paul was a Merkabah mystic (Scott 1997: 118). For a review of the debate see Scott 1997: 106–9. 13 14

The Earliest Christian Model

83

ence, in an extreme situation, to trump his opponents’ claim to be recipients of ‘visions and revelations of the Lord’ (2 Cor. 12: 1). It is not something he would have used as a normal pastoral strategy to establish his credentials as an apostle and teacher. Markus Bockmuehl is right to conclude, without denying its reality, that its place was in Paul’s private spiritual life (1990: 175–7). But even if it does not prove that Paul was ‘the revelatory mediator of a Merkabah experience’, mediating ‘the glory of God in the midst of the Corinthians’ (pace Scott 1997: 118), it does suggest that in hinting that he had glimpsed the beatitude of the saints and shared in the angelic worship of heaven, Paul was not unaware of the traditions of Qumran (cf. Fitzmyer 1999). In the letters issued in Paul’s name by members of his circle there is a shift of emphasis. We find here the characteristically Pauline word ‘adoption’ (Eph. 1: 5), the adoption of believers as sons through Jesus Christ being part of God’s plan ‘to sum up (ανακεφαλαι(σασθαι) all things in Christ’ (Eph. 1: 10). But although believers are incorporated into Christ by baptism, Christ is the head of the body rather than the body itself (Eph. 1: 22; 4: 15; 5: 23; Col. 1: 18). This grows naturally out of Paul’s hierarchal image of Christ as the head of every man just as a man is a woman’s head (1 Cor. 11: 3; cf. Eph. 5: 23), but nevertheless points to a new perspective. Christ as the head of the body clarifies the status of the believer who is ‘in Christ’ as one who is under the power and authority of Christ. But Christ does not exercise power and authority for its own sake. He gives his adopted brothers and sisters free access (παρρησα) to the Father (Eph. 3: 12). Paul had urged his spiritual children to imitate Christ through him (1 Cor. 4: 16; 11: 1; 1 Thess. 1: 6); the author of Ephesians says boldly, ‘Be imitators of God’ (5: 1). Christ takes them right to the fountainhead. Through him they are to be ‘filled with all the fullness of God’ (Eph. 3: 19). That is not to say that the imitation of God can be undertaken easily. Although the new humanity created after the likeness of God has been put on and salvation is assured,15 there is still need for development and growth. The new humanity needs nurturing; it is to be built up through the work of the different orders of ministry until it reaches the full stature of Christ, until it grows into him who is the head of the body (Eph. 4: 11–14). The final fulfilment is set in an eschatological future, which no longer seems to have the same urgency as in Paul’s undisputed letters. The life of believers is now ‘hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3: 3). When Christ appears, they will appear with him in glory (Col. 3: 4). This glory is represented in traditional Apocalyptic imagery. Christ has risen through the spheres (Eph. 4: 10) and is now seated at the right hand of God (Eph. 1: 20; Col. 3: 1). Those who have been renewed in Christ will be enthroned with him, or rather, have already been enthroned with him (Eph. 2: 6). 15

The perfect tense of ‘saved’ (σεσωσµνοι) in Eph. 2: 5 is not found in the genuine letters of Paul.

84

The Earliest Christian Model

Both in the genuinely Pauline letters and in those of his circle it is evident that a real change is brought about by participation in the new creation (Sanders 1991: 74). This is not a purely subjective matter, to be located in the Christian’s self-understanding, as Bultmann (1952: 268–9) and Conzelmann (1969: 208–10) have maintained. Paul’s exhortations against idolatry and sexual immorality, for example, are not based simply on the fact that they are transgressions against the moral law. As transgressions they represent a participatory union which is in conflict with the union with Christ that comes through participating in his body and blood (cf. 1 Cor. 10: 1–7) (Sanders 1977: 454–6). Participatory union is real, not just a figure of speech, although the precise category of reality is difficult to determine.16 In Ziesler’s words, ‘Christ is still an individual and there is no confusion of identity between Him and those who are in Him, but because He is a power-centre He can no longer be thought of in isolation from His people’ (1990: 64). With Christ as their power-centre Christians really are transformed as they are renewed inwardly (2 Cor. 4: 16), really do advance in union with Christ from one glory to another (2 Cor. 3: 18). This dynamic relationship with Christ is expressed in a variety of images. ‘In Christ’ all shall be made alive (1 Cor. 15: 22) and sanctified (1 Cor. 1: 2), shall become a new creation (2 Cor. 5: 17), and have eternal life (Rom. 6: 23). Alternatively, Christ must be formed ‘in us’ (Gal. 4: 19), and it is only when Christ is within us that our spirits are alive (Rom. 8: 10). In a particularly striking image Paul sees himself as a woman in labour struggling to bring forth his spiritual children until Christ is formed in them (Gal. 4: 19; cf. 1 Cor. 4: 15; Philem. 10). Believers are sons of God by adoption (Rom. 8: 14– 15; Gal. 4: 5; cf. Eph. 1: 5). They are ‘heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ’ (Rom. 8: 17; Gal. 3: 29; cf. Eph. 1: 14. They ‘put on’ Christ in baptism, clothing themselves in life and incorruption (Rom. 13: 14; 1 Cor. 15: 53; Gal. 3: 27; cf. Eph. 4: 24 and Col. 3: 10). They become one body, the body of Christ, because they share in the one eucharistic bread (1 Cor. 10: 17). As Sanders has said, ‘the very diversity of the terminology helps to show how the general conception of participation permeated his thought’ (1977: 456). To what extent, then, can we speak of a doctrine of deification already present in Paul? Albert Schweitzer, in spite of his insistence that ‘the fundamental conception of the Pauline mysticism is that the Elect and Christ partake of the same corporeity’ (1957: 121), was quite sure that the conception of deification had no place in Pauline teaching, rightly pointing out that while Paul stresses the union of the believer with Christ, he ‘never speaks of being one with God’ (1957: 3, 26). Several writers on deification have 16 D. E. H. Whiteley has suggested that the term ‘secondary literal sense’ might be used to express a union with Christ that is in between the magical and the metaphysical (1964: 132–3).

The Earliest Christian Model

85

disagreed.17 But there are strong arguments on Schweitzer’s side. First, Christ is not called ‘God’ unequivocally before the second century. Until that step is taken, union with Christ is not the same as union with God. Secondly, Paul did not isolate ‘participation’ for special consideration. He did not have a fixed technical term for participatory union with Christ, the various expressions which he uses – ‘in Christ’, ‘with Christ’, ‘Christ in us’, ‘sons of God’ and so on – reflecting different aspects of that union or being utilized in different contexts. Thirdly, we should not forget that these expressions are metaphorical images. ‘Deification’ as a theological term only emerges when the Pauline metaphors are re-expressed in metaphysical language. Paul simply gives us a hint of what is to come in the writings of Clement, Origen, and their successors. Imitation is less important than participatory union in Paul. In his undisputed letters it is mostly linked with obedience.18 When he says, ‘Be imitators of me as I am of Christ’ (1 Cor. 11: 1), Paul is admonishing his hearers as their ‘father’ (cf. 1 Cor. 4: 15–16), calling on them to submit to his authority. Imitation is also connected with copying an example. Believers imitate Paul and the Lord by sharing in suffering and thus becoming themselves a model (τπον) of discipleship (1 Thess. 1: 6; 2: 14). In Ephesians, alongside the idea of following an example, there is a further, ethical emphasis. Believers are exhorted to be ‘imitators of God’ in a moral sense, to forgive one another as God in Christ forgave them (Eph. 5: 1). Ignatius of Antioch takes up the expression of Ephesians, ‘be imitators of God’ but links imitation with sacrificial discipleship more in the manner of Paul himself (cf. section 4, below). It is only towards the end of the second century that ‘imitation’ becomes a mystical term in Christian usage when Clement of Alexandria, guided by Philo, takes the momentous step of connecting the imitation of God with the Platonic goal of attaining likeness to God as far as humanly possible (Theaetetus 176b).

2. Jewish Christianity The familiarity of the author of Hebrews with Jewish worship has led many commentators to suppose that his addressees were Christians with a Jewish background, but attempts to connect them specifically with the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo or the Enochic Judaism of Qumran have not been convincing (Attridge 1989: 28–9). The most we can say is that the Jewish heritage of Christianity is more pronounced in the author of Hebrews than in any other New Testament writer. 17 18

e.g. Lattey 1916: 257; Theodorou 1956: 21; and Bilaniuk 1973: 347. On Paul’s relationship to the philosophical idea of imitation see Malherbe 1989, esp. 56–8.

86

The Earliest Christian Model

Hebrews was not ascribed to Paul until the end of the second century. It is easy to see why the ascription was made, for there are a number of similarities with Pauline thought, among which is the designation of believers as ‘sons of God’ and ‘partakers of Christ’. God is described as ‘bringing many sons to glory’ (2: 10), and believers are designated ‘Christ’s brethren’, ‘for he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin’ (2: 11). Yet Christ is greater than his brethren, for they are also ‘the children that God has given’ him (2: 13). The author then elucidates the nature of Christ’s solidarity with the human race. First Christ ‘partook of the same nature’ as men (παραπλησω µετσχεν τν αυτν) (2: 14), that is, flesh and blood, so as to be able to conquer death and the devil and become a high priest in expiation of the sins of the people, setting himself alongside those who are tempted in order to help them. Believers in turn participate in Christ through becoming ‘sharers in a heavenly calling’ (κλ!σεω πουρανου µτοχοι) (3: 1), which makes them God’s house, over which the Father has set his Son. It is this that enables us to be ‘partakers of Christ’ (µτοχοι το Χριστο) ‘if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end’ (3: 14). Our participation in Christ thus begins when we become members of his household and share in his destiny, entering into the heavenly sanctuary. The emphasis differs from what we find in Paul. To be a son sets the believer alongside Christ rather than ‘in him’. Christ is the brother who is also the leader, the pioneer of salvation (αρχηγ# τ σωτηρα) (2: 10), the high priest of blessings to come (9: 11), the mediator of the new covenant (9: 15) and ‘the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him’ (5: 9), not the saviour in whom we are ‘clothed’, with whose life we actually live (Gal. 2: 20). According to Hebrews, participating in Christ as a son brings one into the Father’s presence. A comparable use of µετχω and related words is also found in phrases expressing the reception of a share of milk (/ µετχων γα´λακτο) (5: 13), of the Holy Spirit at baptism (µετχου γενηθντα Πνευ´µατο Α 8 γου) (6: 14) – which is to taste of the heavenly gift – and of the blessings of God (µεταλαµβα´νει ευλογα απ# το θεο) (6: 7). For the author of Hebrews, to participate in something means having access to a source. To participate in Christ is therefore to have access through him to the Father, the ultimate source of salvation and sanctification.19 19 J. Moffat, like many older commentators, gives an inadequate interpretation of µτοχοι το Χριστο when he says that the author ‘means no more than their membership in the household of God over which Christ presides’ (1924: liv–lv). H. W. Attridge recognizes the metaphysical connotations: ‘The basic structure of the comment replicates that of 3: 6, although the emphasis on the conditional quality of the addressees’ relationship to Christ is stressed more firmly. That relationship is described not in terms of the metaphor of God’s house, but with the suggestive language of “participants” (µτοχοι) in Christ. That this participation is a reality is also more strongly affirmed in the note that “we have become” (γεγναµεν) partakers, at the same time that its conditional quality is reemphasized. The notion of participation in Christ recalls the Pauline and deutero-Pauline image of the church as the body, although the philosophical conceptuality is distinctive’ (1989: 117–18).

The Earliest Christian Model

87

Hebrews develops the Pauline idea of sonship in the context of an overriding liturgical imagery. Christ mediates between man and God. He entered the heavenly sanctuary in his human nature and made expiation for our sins. The result is παρρησα, a key expression in the Epistle (3: 6; 4: 16; 10: 19; 10: 35). Being a son implies our solidarity with Christ and our access, through him and the expiation made by him, to the Father. This is what it means to be a ‘partaker of Christ’ – a different concept from the Pauline participatory union with Christ which transforms believers and makes them like him. 3. Johannine Christianity Ephesus, which may have been the centre of a Pauline ‘school’,20 is also the traditional home of the circle which at the end of the first century produced the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of John. The Johannine community is more anonymous and less easy to profile than the Pauline groups. Only in the third Epistle, where the ‘presbyter’ writes to Gaius, commending Demetrius and complaining of the attitude of Diotrephes, are we able to put names to any of its members. But from a careful analysis of the Johannine documents it is possible to reconstruct, as R. E. Brown has done (1979), a plausible history of the community. The pre-Gospel community had strong Palestinian connections rooted in the eyewitness testimony of the Beloved Disciple. The Gospel was written in about 90 ce, when the community had been expelled from the synagogues (John 9: 22), ‘the Jews’ were its opponents, and ‘the world’ stood for those who preferred darkness to light. The divided Johannine community portrayed in the Epistles belongs to a third stage. There were now two groups who were interpreting the christology and ethics of the Gospel differently. The secessionists drew on the Fourth Gospel’s high christology, with its emphasis on the pre-existence of God’s Son. They were convinced they were sinless and already enjoyed intimacy with God. As a corrective, the author of 1 John stresses the need for ethical behaviour and for following the teaching of the earthly Jesus. His pessimistic remark that the world is paying heed to his opponents (1 John 4: 5) suggests that the secessionists were enjoying greater success. Finally the Johannine community was dissolved. The secessionists moved in the direction of Gnosticism, taking the Fourth Gospel with them, while the remainder was absorbed into the Great Church. The merit of such a reconstruction is that it accounts for the subsequent history of the Fourth Gospel. With the corrective of 1 John, the Gospel was accepted early into the canon of the New Testament, but it is not much 20

First suggested by Conzelmann (1965); cf. Meeks 1983: 82.

88

The Earliest Christian Model

referred to by proto-orthodox writers. The Gnostics make more explicit use of it: the earliest commentary we know is by the Valentinian Heracleon. It was only in the third century, when Heracleon was answered by Origen, that the Fourth Gospel was reclaimed by the Great Church.21 The destiny of the Christian as represented in the Fourth Gospel has features which encourage the further development of the believer’s exalted status as we encounter it amongst the secessionists of 1 John. In his valedictory prayer Jesus promises his unity with the Father to those who believe in him, that they might receive his glory and be ‘brought to perfection as one’ (John 17: 22–3). This unity originates in the Father and the Son and flows down from them to believers. Two characteristic motifs running right through the Gospel which express this gift of unity with God are those of life and light. In the synoptic Gospels the righteous expect to inherit eternal life in the future. In John all who believe in Christ possess it here and now (John 3: 16). This is because Jesus Christ not only has this life from the Father (John 5: 26); he actually is life (John 11: 25; 14: 6; 1 John 1: 2; 5: 11; Rev. 1: 18). All who participate in him by believing in him and sharing in baptism (John 3: 15) and the Eucharist (John 6: 54) participate in eternal life: ‘He who has the Son has life’ (1 John 5: 12; cf. John 3: 36). Possessing a supernatural life which originates in the Father and was made manifest by the Son (1 John 1: 2) is analogous to children receiving biological life from their earthly father (cf. John 1: 13). Accordingly, believers are called ‘children of God’. Unlike Paul, John never calls them ‘sons of God’. The phrase υ2# το θεο is reserved for the unique Son; believers are τκνα το θεο – perhaps John’s equivalent to the distinction between Son and sons which Paul expresses by his image of adoption. These children of God are a new spiritual creation. As God breathed natural life into Adam’s nostrils when he was created from the dust of the earth (Gen. 2: 7), so Christ imparted supernatural life to his disciples when he breathed on them and said: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20: 22). Through the Spirit given by the glorified Christ believers already possess an eternal life which death cannot destroy. Even more emphatically than Paul, John teaches an eschatology that has already been inaugurated. A future fulfilment still awaits believers at the resurrection, but John’s treatment of it is cursory and conventional (John 5: 28–9). His personal conviction is that we enjoy the fullness of life, even the fullness of the knowledge of God, now: ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 9). John associates life with light (John 1: 4; 8: 12). Again, Jesus Christ does not just resemble light; He is light (John 8: 12; cf. 1: 7; 3: 19). Light is a 21 On the Gnostic use of John see Pagels 1973. The first orthodox writer generally recognized to have quoted John is Theophilus of Antioch, but both Ignatius and Justin appear to have been familiar with Johannine themes.

The Earliest Christian Model

89

particularly powerful image for John’s purposes. It was the first product of God, created on the first day of the week (Gen. 1: 3). It provides the necessary conditions for life. It was already established in the Old Testament (and even more strongly in the writings of the Qumran community) as a symbol of good in contrast with the darkness of evil. Just as participation through faith and the sacraments in the life of God makes believers ‘children of God’, so participation in the light of God makes them ‘sons of Light’ (John 12: 36). Possession of the light is associated, moreover, with knowledge and vision. This is connected by the author of 1 John with the future aspect of Johannine eschatology that is neglected by the secessionists: ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3: 2). It is not certain whether our being like him is consequent to the vision or a precondition for it, but what is clear is the a fortiori argument that if we have already been raised to the status of ‘children of God’, ‘how much greater transforming power shall there be in the vision of Him as He is, no longer veiled by the conditions of earthly life!’ (Brooke 1912: 83). The author of 1 John is correcting a one-sided Johannine spirituality that minimizes the significance of the earthly life of Jesus. The eschatological state of the Christian may have already been inaugurated but it has not yet been consummated. Believers may be ‘children of God’ and ‘sons of light’. They may have received the Spirit (John 20: 22) and may enjoy a share of the fullness of God (John 1: 16). But if they give credence to those who deny that Christ came in the flesh or that his death has any salvific meaning (1 John 4: 2; 5: 6), if they believe that they have already attained perfection (1 John 1: 8), if they do not put the commandment of love into practice in their moral conduct (1 John 2: 3; 2: 9; 3: 4), they do not possess eternal life (1 John 5: 11; 5: 20). The views criticized by the author of 1 John clearly tend towards a docetic christology and a ‘divine spark’ anthropology characteristic of Gnostic forms of Christianity. It is not surprising that the Fourth Gospel found an appreciative readership amongst the Valentinians and others like them.22

4. Ignatius of Antioch A decade or so after the Johannine community’s dissolution, Ignatius of Antioch passed through the province of Asia on his way under military 22 The Nag Hammadi Library testifies to the popularity of John in Gnostic circles, e.g. The Tripartite Tractate, The Apocryphon of John (in two versions) and the Trimorphic Protenoia, all of which probably belong to the mid-second century ce.

90

The Earliest Christian Model

escort to martyrdom in Rome. Modelling himself on Paul,23 he wrote five letters to the churches of Asia on various theological and pastoral issues, one to Polycarp of Smyrna on the role of the bishop, and one to the church of Rome to prepare it for his arrival and prevent it from using its influence to thwart his longing for a martyr’s death. His letters have style and fervour. Although in the highly mannered rhetorical tradition known as ‘Asianism’, they are intensely personal. Ignatius was in a delicate position. He was bishop of Antioch but seems to have had a difficult relationship with an important faction of the Antiochene church. He may even have lost control of the church, and suffered humiliation as a consequence (Schoedel 1985: 10). His letters appeal for recognition and support in his struggle to resolve the situation at Antioch. With the re-establishment of peace in his church, his anxieties subside (Polyc. 7. 1).24 He could now go forward to his martyrdom confident that it would seal and consummate his episcopate. The spiritual themes of the letters – participation in God, the Eucharist, martyrdom, unity, attaining God, imitation – have been taken to imply a major departure from biblical eschatology, the replacement, under Gnostic influence, of the resurrection of the faithful by the Hellenistic ascent of the soul to immortality.25 But throughout Ignatius’ letters the ecclesiastical dimension is paramount. Against the individualism of docetic ‘false teachers’ he stresses the need to show love for widows and orphans and those in distress (Smyrn. 6. 2; Polyc. 4. 1). True Christians are not those who follow their own will but those who are united with their fellow worshippers under the leadership of their bishop (Eph. 5. 1 to 6. 1). Their final state is not as bodiless spirits but as participants in the resurrection with Christ (Smyrn. 2). If the letters are thought to have a mystical tone, this comes from the intensity which Ignatius’ impending martyrdom lends to his arguments. Yet he is more interested in common Christian solidarity than his personal destiny. The keynote of all that Ignatius writes is unity. The unity of the Church, which implies obedience to the bishop, is one of the fundamental marks of authentic Christianity (Philad. 3). Because obedience to the bishop is equivalent to obedience to God, Ignatius can say that the union which God offers is himself (Trall. 11. 2). This expression has been thought to indicate a conception of the Church as something resembling the Gnostic divine pleroma (Schlier 1929: 90). But comparison with similar passages shows that Ignatius is not identifying union with the Church with union with God. The emphasis is rather on the obedience to the Church’s teachers that gives one access to 23 Rom. 6. 3, 9. 2, cf. 1 Cor. 4: 16; 11: 1; 15: 8. Ignatius, however, is closer than Paul to Hellenistic epistolary models (Schoedel 1985: 7, 35). 24 Very likely because he had heard that hostility between rival factions of Christians at Antioch had ceased. Trevett suggests that Ignatius might have given himself up voluntarily to the authorities to bring about such a peace (1992: 59–66). 25 Preiss 1938; cf. Tinsley 1957 and especially Swartley 1973.

The Earliest Christian Model

91

God. In one image the bishop presides on the model of God, with the presbyters seated on the model of the college of Apostles (Magn. 6. 1).26 In another the presbyterate is seen as attuned to the bishop like the strings of a (twelve-stringed) cithara, with the faithful, all singing with one voice, forming the chorus (Eph. 4. 1). The true Christian, then, is in perfect concord and harmony with the Church gathered round the bishop. Such unity leads to participation in God (Eph. 4. 2). In keeping with his readiness to call Christ God without any qualification (Eph. 7. 2; Smyrn. 1. 1; Polyc. 8. 2), Ignatius goes further than any New Testament author in speaking of the believer’s intimacy with God. Christians are ‘God-bearers’ (Eph. 9. 2) and ‘God-runners’ (Philad. 2. 2). They ‘participate in God’ (Eph. 4. 2), ‘are wholly of God’ (Eph. 8. 1) ‘are full of God’ (Magn. 14. 1) and ‘have God in themselves’ (Rom. 6. 3). These phrases, however, imply only that their subjects are authentic Christians obedient to the will of God as expressed by the bishop. They do not carry the sense of a warm relationship with a personal God. Their mystic possibilities, as Schoedel says, are not exploited by Ignatius (1985: 19). Where we do find personal warmth and fervour is in passages expressing the imitation and the attainment of God, particularly where Ignatius applies these terms to himself (Swartley 1973: 98–103; Schoedel 1985: 28–31). Instances of the latter, however, are rare. It is mostly the recipients of the letters, not the author himself, who are called imitators of God. The Ephesians are such (Eph. 1. 1) because they display love in sending a delegation led by bishop Onesimus to greet Ignatius on his arrival in Smyrna. The Trallians are also ‘imitators of God’ because they have acted similarly under their bishop, Polybius (Trall. 1. 2). Moreover, the Ephesians are exhorted to be imitators of God (i.e. Christ) in their patient endurance of wrongs (Eph. 10. 3), while the Philadelphians are urged to be imitators of Jesus Christ in their love of union and obedience to the bishop (Philad. 7. 2). Only on one occasion does Ignatius apply the theme of imitation to himself, when he beseeches the Roman church to allow him to be an imitator of the suffering of his God (Rom. 6. 3). This does not indicate an individualistic preoccupation with his own salvation. He longs to exemplify in his own life the obedience to Christ and the acceptance of suffering which he recommends to other Christians. Indeed, in his diffidence he sees others as already ‘imitators of God’ (Eph. 1. 2) while he himself will only become an imitator through his martyrdom.27 26 This passage is sometimes cited as evidence of an ecclesiology that sees the Church on earth as representing the order of heaven. The archetype for perfect ecclesial relations, however, is not the heavenly communion of saints but the historical example of the perfect obedience to God exhibited by Christ and the Apostles during their life on earth. As Schoedel observes, Ignatius treats the Apostles ‘basically as figures from the past’, rather than members of some heavenly hierarchy (1985: 113). 27 It is noteworthy that Ignatius only once refers to himself as a bishop (Rom. 9. 1). It was in virtue of his coming martyrdom that he could speak with authority to churches other than his own.

92

The Earliest Christian Model

The same diffidence may be observed in connection with attaining God. This ultimate spiritual fulfilment is not a present reality for the Christian but a future possibility, a communion with God which is realized at the moment of death. Every Christian is thought to attain God as a reward for endurance (Smyrn. 9. 2). But Ignatius does not take his own salvation for granted. He asks for the prayers of the Magnesians that he may attain God (Magn. 14). Such an achievement is the fruit of true discipleship (Eph. 10. 1), a discipleship which he hopes to consummate in the arena. Even those who are inclined to maximize Ignatius’ mystical side do not consider him a proponent of deification (Corwin 1960: 265–7). Certainly he has little in common with the Platonizing intellectuals of Alexandria. He places himself in the tradition of Paul, but there are also discontinuities with Pauline thought. He lacks, for example, Paul’s sense of participatory union with Christ; nor do we find that characteristically Pauline phrase, ‘in Christ’. Yet he does envisage a transformation that is brought about in the believer through his being a true disciple of the Lord. We can see this most vividly in the language which he uses about his impending martyrdom. Some of this admittedly has Gnostic overtones. He implores the Romans not to deceive him with matter but to let him receive pure light (Rom. 6. 2). But this does not amount to a Gnosticizing view of salvation. The closest parallels are with Paul. He feels that the pangs of birth are upon him (Rom. 6. 1; cf. Rom. 8: 23): his material longing has been crucified (Rom. 7. 2; cf. Gal. 6: 14); he wants no longer to live in a human fashion (Rom. 8. 1; cf. Gal. 2: 20) but to become an authentic human being (Rom. 6. 2). ‘I am the wheat of God’, he says, ‘and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread’ (Rom. 4. 1). The allusion is probably not eucharistic (Schoedel 1985: 175–6). The emphasis is rather on the transformation of a natural product into something greatly superior. Through martyrdom Ignatius will attain to the new humanity inaugurated by Christ, a pure white bread produced from the humble raw material of grains of wheat. 5. Valentinian Christianity Ignatius appears to have had a rhetorical training but at the same time was thoroughly rooted in the ecclesiastical tradition. The Christian intellectuals of the first half of the second century came from a different background. They were perhaps more highly educated, certainly more at home in the philosophical culture of their day. Although not detached from the Christian congregations gathered around their bishop, they set up independent didaskaleia in the great urban centres on the model of the philosophical schools. People who wanted deeper, more spiritual insights than could be found at

The Earliest Christian Model

93

the Sunday synaxis28 went to the lectures and seminars of such teachers. After all, had not Paul himself said, ‘Yet among the mature . . . we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. . . . And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to the spiritual’ (1 Cor. 2: 6–13)? Those who saw themselves as successors of the Apostle in this respect included Basilides and Carpocrates in Alexandria, Aristides in Athens, and Marcion, Valentinus, and Justin in Rome. Some accepted the authority of the bishops and presbyters of ecclesiastical Christianity; others relied on a more esoteric tradition, using subjective qualitative criteria to define true membership of the Church. For the latter the real Christians were those who had come to know God through the application of the maxim ‘Know thyself’. By looking within and exploring their own experience they could discover a divine principle which would lead them up out of this world of illusion to unity with the very source of divine life. One of the most influential of such teachers was Valentinus (c.100–175 ce). He was born in the Nile delta and received his education at Alexandria. He may have met the Gnostic Basilides, who was teaching in Alexandria at the time, but there are no reports of this. To furnish him with apostolic credentials his followers claimed that he had studied under a disciple of St Paul called Theudas. Shortly before 140 he moved to Rome, where he founded a successful school. He seems to have been an outstanding teacher who could expound his doctrines with poetic and rhetorical power. His successors continued his teaching for several generations and in the second and third centuries were ecclesiastical Christianity’s most formidable opponents. Valentinus’ undisputed writings survive only in a few fragments quoted by ecclesiastical writers, chiefly Clement and Hippolytus. The Gospel of Truth, however, which we have in Coptic translation thanks to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, is attributed by many to Valentinus on stylistic grounds. Its genre is not that of a Gospel but of a homily, its title coming from its incipit. Bentley Layton calls it ‘the earliest surviving sermon of Christian mysticism’, and ‘one of the most brilliantly crafted works of ancient Christian literature’ (1987: 250). If not by Valentinus himself, it is at least the work of a brilliant pupil. It is a call to the spiritually minded to turn inwards in order to attain true understanding and through Christ return to the primordial source of their being. The Gospel of Truth begins with an analysis of the situation in which we find ourselves. This material world is not reality; it is illusory, ‘the modelled form of deception’ (16. 24–5), whereas reality, or truth, is unchangeable, 28 The Sunday sermon was well-established by the second century. For an account of liturgical preaching see Justin, 1 Apol. 67.

94

The Earliest Christian Model

imperturbable, supreme beauty. Not everyone can appreciate this. Those in the ‘middle’ (i.e. ordinary Christians) are beguiled and taken captive by error, which is the result of forgetfulness, the soul’s obliviousness to its previous heavenly existence. Thus far The Gospel of Truth follows the standard tenets of Platonism. But the proposed solution parts company with Platonic doctrine. The remedy for ignorance is gnôsis––a knowledge or understanding which is not philosophical but personal and experiential. Knowledge of reality is not taught in a discursive way but is communicated by a person, Jesus Christ, who is the gnôsis of the Father, or rather, who was persecuted by Error and nailed to a tree so that he became the fruit of the Father’s gnôsis. Those who eat of this tree can discover truth within themselves. The metaphor of eating underlines the experiential nature of the knowledge of truth. It also points to its reciprocal character: he who created the pleroma is contained within the person who has eaten, even though the person who has eaten is part of the pleroma. Truth is personal: to have gnôsis is to know and be known, to be glorified and to give glory (18. 11 to 19. 30). Responding to the invitation to gnôsis is like coming to oneself after a period of drunkenness (22. 16–18) or waking up from a nightmare (30. 2–14). Through the Son, who ‘put off the corrupt rags of the body and put on immortality’, the elect are enrolled in the book of the living and gain understanding (20. 10 to 21. 24). They learn that they came from the Father and must return to him (22. 23; 33. 30), that they are ‘children of interior understanding’ (32. 38–9), that they are ‘the day that is perfect’ in whom ‘there dwells the star that does not set’ (32. 32–4), that they are ‘unsheathed intelligence’ (33. 9), the ‘fragrance’, or emanation, of the Father (34. 1). Those who are moved to seek truth must therefore turn inwards: ‘Focus your attention upon yourselves’ (33. 11), says the author. They should not be concerned with others except to raise up those who wish to rise and awaken those who sleep. For the return to the Father is essentially a solitary path of self-discovery (Pagels 1979: 125–8). Those who strain up towards salvation find that it reaches down towards them, for the pleroma naturally strives to fill all deficiencies. The final goal of the elect is repose in the Father. All who have emanated from the Father will return to him. Not that their knowledge of him will be total. The Father remains ‘the one who is hidden’ (37. 38); he is unnameable and indescribable (40. 16–17). The elect will return to the place from which they emanated and there they will still continue to develop, ‘tasting of it and being nourished and growing’ (41. 10–11). In the repose of the Father they become identified with ultimate reality though without exhausting its meaning. Yet they themselves are the truth, and the Father is within them and they are in the Father, being perfect (42. 25–8; cf. John 17: 21; 1 John 2: 24). In a striking simile the author says, ‘they hold themselves close to him so that, as it were, they receive from his face something like kisses’ (41. 32–4). In another tender image the elect

The Earliest Christian Model

95

strain ‘towards the solitary and perfect, him who is mother to them’ (42.15– 17). They become his perfect children, worthy of his name, dwelling in the place of repose in true and eternal life and continually occupied with the father of the pleroma (43). Other Valentinian texts fill out this destiny of the elect, not so much in terms of philosophical or theological analysis as in the development of suggestive images. Although the successors of Valentinus soon split into two traditions, the eastern restricting salvation to the pneumatics while the western allowed an intermediate form also to the psychics,29 both traditions speak of the spirits of the elect entering the bridal chamber, overcoming the male– female divide, and participating as angels or brides of angels in the Father’s pleroma (Irenaeus, AH 1. 7. 5; Clem. Alex. Exc. Theod. 64. 1; 79). The sexual imagery of the bridal chamber draws on two fundamental sources, the synoptic evangelists’ presentation of the kingdom of heaven as a wedding feast (Matt. 22: 1–14; 25: 1–13) and Aristophanes’ myth of the original androgynous unity of human nature, the ‘primeval wholeness’ of which the urge to sexual union seeks to recapture (Plato, Symp. 189c–193d). In The Gospel of Philip the separation of Eve from Adam (Gen. 2: 21–2) is interpreted against this background as the source of death, which Christ came to rectify by reuniting the two components of male and female (Gos. Phil. 63, 70). Final union amongst the Valentinians takes place in the heavenly realm. According to the reports of both Irenaeus and Clement, the pneumatics shed the soul and become pure noes, or spiritual selves, or ‘angels’ (which is always masculine in Greek), or ‘brides’ swallowed up in the masculinity of the angels (AH 1. 7. 1; Exc. Theod. 64. 1). Alternatively, ‘the seed of light’ is seen as female which when formed (i.e. trained) becomes male and a son of the heavenly bridegroom. Having become male it enters the pleroma and unites with the angels (Exc. Theod. 79). Such union, however, can be anticipated in this world. With their emphasis on symbolism and imagery, the Valentinians had a developed sacramental system: ‘truth did not come into the world nakedly; rather it came in prototypes and images: the world will not accept it in any other form’ (Gos. Phil. 59). Baptism, the first of their sacraments, was nothing short of a symbolic appropriation of the resurrection. There is no raising of bodies at some future date. Those who have separated themselves from the bondage of the body and attained an interior unity ‘already possess the resurrection’ (Treat. Res. 49. 9–23). And if they ‘do not first receive resurrection when they are alive, once they have died they will receive nothing’ (Gos. Phil. 79). For the vital thing is the resurrection of the spirit, ‘which 29 This division was the result of christological disagreement, the western branch, under Ptolemy, holding that Christ had a psychic body, while the eastern branch, under Theodotus, restricted his body simply to the pneumatic. Consequently for Theodotus only the spirituals enter the pleroma as brides of the angels, but for Ptolemy ‘the souls of the just also (i.e. the psychics) will gain repose in the place of the midpoint’ (Irenaeus, AH 1. 1. 12).

96

The Earliest Christian Model

swallows up the resurrection of the soul along with the resurrection of the flesh’ (Treat. Res. 46. 1). The resurrection of the spirit is the first stage of the return to the Father. The last stage before death is marked by the sacrament of the bridal chamber, which endows the recipient, through chrismation, with a ‘garment of light’ (Gos. Phil. 59, 69, 90, 107), the wedding garment with which he or she will be able to enter into union with the angels and become spiritual aeons (Clement, Exc. Theod. 64. 1; cf. Eusebius, HE 4. 11. 5). The Valentinians exercised an enormous influence on contemporary Christians, not only negatively––orthodox ecclesiastical Christianity defining itself largely in reaction to Gnostic groups––but positively, too. Their writings were keenly studied by such speculative theologians as Clement of Alexandria and Origen who, unlike the heresiologists, were able to adapt some of their insights to orthodox use.30 Origen in particular skilfully exploited the Valentinian myth of the soul’s descent and ascent, ‘demythologizing’ it and integrating it into a more orthodox scheme of salvation. The fruits of this adaptation of Gnostic teaching will be seen in the intellectualist spirituality of some of Origen’s successors, especially Evagrius Ponticus and Gregory of Nyssa (Rudolph 1987: 369). 6. Justin Martyr One of Valentinus’ proto-orthodox rivals, who conducted his own didaskaleion in Rome in the late 150s ‘above the baths of a certain Martinus’ (Musurillo 1972: 49), was Justin Martyr. His meetings with his disciples, who included Tatian and possibly Irenaeus, have not been described for us, but it is not unlikely that they included the kind of questioning mentioned by Porphyry in his account of Plotinus’ school in the following century. Justin himself tells us that he was led to Christianity by the questions put to him by a mysterious old man he met while walking on the seashore at Ephesus as a young student. He had considered the claims of the Stoics, the Peripatetics, and the Pythagoreans, but for different reasons was put off them all. For a while the Platonists satisfied his thirst for ‘the science of being and the knowledge of truth’ (Dial. 3). For the telos of man in Platonism, as Justin says, is to see God, the supreme cause of all things (Dial. 2). Yet he doubted whether Platonism in itself could achieve this telos. The key question was put to him by the old man on the seashore: ‘What affinity is there between us and God? Is the soul divine and immortal and a part of that royal intellect [which 30 Clement made an annotated collection of passages from various Gnostic writers, the Excerpta ex Theodoto, amongst whom is the leading member of the eastern branch of the Valentinian school who gives the collection its name. Origen, in the course of his commentary on St John’s Gospel, reproduces and discusses forty-eight passages from a commentary on the same Gospel by the western Valentinian, Heracleon.

The Earliest Christian Model

97

Plato describes]?’ (Dial. 4). The answer is no: the affinity we have with God is moral, not ontological. No one will see God ‘except he who shall have lived righteously, purified by righteousness and every other virtue’. Justin supports this assertion with a neat syllogism. If the soul were immortal, it would be unbegotten (i.e. if it had no end, it could have had no beginning). And if it were unbegotten, there would be a multiplicity of unbegotten beings. But there can only be one unbegotten being––who is by definition God–– otherwise there is no escape from the problem of infinite regression. Therefore the soul is not immortal of its own nature. The old man goes on to point out that neither is the soul of its own nature alive. Either it is life or it possesses life. If it is life, it would be able to move other beings. As it cannot do so, it only participates in life, and ‘that which participates in anything is distinct from that which is participated in’. The soul therefore participates in life for as long as God wishes it to live. It does not live of itself as God does; when the life-giving spirit withdraws from it, it ceases to exist. Both these arguments derive from Aristotle (Grant 1956: 246–8). They prove that Platonism cannot deliver what it promises: because the soul has no natural powers of vision arising from an innate immortality or ontological affinity with the divine, the human intellect cannot see God ‘unless adorned by the Holy Spirit’. It therefore needs the prophets of the Old Testament and ultimately Christ himself, who opens ‘the gates of light’ and grants wisdom to the understanding. The old man uses philosophical arguments simply as a preparation for the response of faith to the message of the prophets and the illumination which follows as a gift from God. This is precisely the approach that Plotinus was to find so contemptible a century later. Justin was aware, however, that presenting Christ as the fulfilment of the prophets was not going to mean much to a pagan audience. In his two Apologies, addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–61 ce),31 he therefore tries a different approach. To counter the objection that Christianity is a recent and arbitrary innovation he argues for the universal significance of Christ through the operation of the divine logos. The fullness of the logos is Christ, in whom people have shared in part throughout human history by the operation of the logos spermatikos, the ‘sowing logos’ who disseminates the ‘seeds of truth’ (1 Apol. 46).32 This enables those who have ‘lived with the logos’, such as Socrates (2 Apol. 10), Heraclitus (1 Apol. 46), and Musonius (2 Apol. 8), to be regarded as honorary Christians, ‘for each person spoke well, according to the part present in him of the divine logos’ (2 Apol. 13; 31 Fergus Millar believes that Justin’s Apology or Apologies (it is not clear whether the second, which lacks a formal address, was originally independent of the first) may well have been a real petition, a libellus, presented to the emperor (1992: 562–3). 32 Logos spermatikos is a term with a background in Stoicism which was used by Justin in an entirely original way. For a good discussion of its meaning, with a review of the scholarly literature, see Barnard 1997: 196–200.

98

The Earliest Christian Model

trans. Barnard). But to live by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole logos, who is Christ, is a different matter. In Justin’s view, the philosophers and poets may have known Christ in an imperfect way, but the full possession of the divine logos can only take place through the personal knowledge of the incarnate logos that comes by grace, especially via baptism and the Eucharist (1 Apol. 61; 2 Apol. 10). Baptism is ‘the bath of repentance and knowledge’ because it cleanses the soul from the sins which preclude knowledge of God––anger, avarice, envy, and hatred (Dial. 14). Knowledge of God is not an external knowledge, such as people might have of music, arithmetic, or astronomy (Dial. 3). It is an intimate, personal knowledge that comes from living the life of Christ through participating in it. Although initiated by the new birth (αναγννησι) and illumination (φωτισµ) of baptism, this knowledge needs to be nurtured by the Eucharist. For the Eucharist is not received as common bread and wine; it is Christ’s flesh and blood, nourishing our own flesh and blood ‘by a transformation’ (κατα` µεταβολ!ν) (1 Apol. 23, 61). Such an inward conformation to Christ of the whole human person in the Pauline manner is equivalent to the believer’s restoration to the Adamic state, which, according to Justin, Scripture shows to have been divine. The Dialogue with Trypho purports to be the record of a two-day debate between Justin and a Jewish scholar and his companions, presumably in Ephesus.33 It is unlikely to mirror an actual debate: Justin was writing in Rome in the 160s, some twenty years after the supposed event, and in any case the Dialogue was a well-established fictional genre. But the Jewish milieu that Justin portrays has many convincing features. Trypho is not simply a two-dimensional figure set up to prove the superiority of the Christian position. He may be too ready to concede some of Justin’s points, but he stands firm on the characteristic features of Diaspora Judaism, circumcision, the sabbath, festivals, and the observance of new moons, and makes some telling points, such as the observation that Christians claim to be pious but do not distinguish themselves sufficiently from the Gentiles (Dial. 10. 3). In spite of not offering a sustained counter-argument, he is no pushover for Justin but remains courteous, though unconvinced, to the end. We can safely say that Justin is drawing on real experience of Christian–Jewish debate for the Dialogue. Such experience would account for the accurate knowledge of Jewish practice and biblical exegesis which he displays. Toward the end of the Dialogue the debate turns to who is the true Israel. Justin argues that the Christians have supplanted the Jews as the true Israel because they have inherited the divine promises: Christians are related to the Messianic Israel of Isaiah 42: 1–4 (LXX) by a spiritual birth just as Jews are related to the Hebrew patriarch of Genesis 35: 10–11 by physical descent. 33

On the setting of the Dialogue see Lieu 1996: 103–9.

The Earliest Christian Model

99

Because Christ ‘begot us in regard to God, like Jacob and Israel and Judah and Joseph and David, we are called the true children of God and are such (cf. 1 John 3: 1), for we keep the commandments of Christ’ (Dial. 123). Trypho’s objection to the claim that Christians are the children of God causes Justin to embark on a detailed justification of it. By a standard technique of Jewish exegesis he appeals to another passage in Scripture where a similar expression occurs in order to illuminate the Johannine verse (1 John 3: 1) to which he has alluded.34 The passage is Psalm 82: 6, ‘I said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High’. The verse which follows, ‘You shall die like men, and you shall fall like one of the princes’ shows, Justin says, that these words were addressed originally to Adam and Eve, who had once been immortal but after their transgression had become subject to death and had fallen ‘like one of the princes’, namely, Satan. In verse 7 ‘the Holy Spirit reproaches human beings, who were made dispassionate and immortal like God, if they had kept his commandments, and were deemed worthy by him to be called his sons, and yet made themselves like Adam and Eve and worked death for themselves’. In Psalm 82, Justin concludes, ‘it is proved that all human beings are deemed worthy of becoming gods and of having the power to become sons of the Most High, and will be judged and condemned on their own account like Adam and Eve’ (Dial. 124). This is the first appearance of Psalm 82: 6 in Christian literature as a proof-text supporting the notion of deification.35 The background to Justin’s use of the text lies in the increased interest of second-century Christians in Jewish Messianic testimony sources.36 The New Testament’s testimonies had concentrated on what was novel, even shocking, in the Christian claims for Jesus’ Messiahship, namely, his suffering, death, and resurrection. By the second century, when Christians and Jews were competing for converts 34 Justin’s κα θεο τκνα αληθινα` καλου´µεθα κα σµν (Dial. 123) seems to echo 1 John’s 9να τκνα θεο κληθµεν κα σµν (3: 1) rather more closely than Paul’s :τι σµ;ν τκνα θεο (Rom. 8: 16), even though Justin has a direct relationship with Paul and certainly makes use of Romans in the Dialogue. If this is an allusion to John, it is one of the earliest in an orthodox writer. On Justin’s relationship to Paul see Skarsaune 1987: 92–100, where full reference is made to the literature. On his more problematic relationship to John see Chadwick 1966: 4, 124–5 and Skarsaune 1987: 105–6. 35 The reference to Psalm 82: 6 in John 10: 34 serves a different purpose, though the exploration of its meaning given there also owes a debt to Rabbinic exegesis. When accused of making himself equal to God, Jesus resorted to a method of argument characteristic of Rabbinic hermeneutics. He clearly accepted one of the learned views current among the Tannaim (see above, Chapter 3. 4) that Ps. 82: 6 referred to corrupt human judges, or perhaps even to the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf at Sinai. The implication of his quoting Ps. 82: 6 was (i) that if men would be referred to as gods in Scripture without blasphemy, why should it be blasphemous for him to call himself the (or a) Son of God, and (ii) if human beings who received the word of God but were later sentenced to death for wrongdoing could be called gods, a fortiori how much more worthy of the title was he who was the recipient of God’s word in a unique way, or indeed was the Word of God himself ? (cf. R. E. Brown 1966–70: 409–10). 36 In what follows I rely on Skarsaune 1987. It should also be noted that the Rabbinic interpretation of Ps. 82: 6–7 discussed in Chapter 3 above may have its context in a general concern to respond to Christian claims that Christians had superseded the Jews as the favoured people of the covenant. See further Hammer 1986: 17–20.

100

The Earliest Christian Model

amongst sympathetic Gentiles, Christians had to address the mainstream Jewish Messianic testimonies. Justin uses material which exploits such testimonies––a ‘recapitulation’ source and a ‘kerygmatic’ source have been identified (Skarsaune 1987: 425–7)––and supplements it with Old Testament quotations taken directly from Romans and Galatians. In these letters, which Justin seems to have known well, Paul had claimed that Christians were the true seed of Abraham and therefore inheritors of God’s promise. This view had been attacked by Rabbis who had pointed out that not all the descendants of Abraham were inheritors of the promise but only the descendants of Jacob/Israel. After all, Hagar and Esau were the ancestors of people not encompassed by the promise. Justin counter-attacks by claiming that Christ is the new Jacob/Israel and that Christians inherit the promise as his true spiritual descendants. At this point Oskar Skarsaune, who has made a detailed study of Justin’s use of the Old Testament, detects a change of source (1987: 187–8). The logic of Justin’s argument would seem to require his saying that as Christ is the Messianic Israel, so those begotten by him are the true spiritual Israel. The reference to the children of God does not flow from the preceding discussion. Moreover, the text to which Justin appeals, Psalm 82: 6, does not prove that Christians are the children of God; it proves, rather, that all human beings have failed in their vocation to become sons of the Most High. Skarsaune believes that Dial. 124 fits better thematically with Dial. 125 than with the preceeding section, the argument being that ‘Christ conquers (Dial. 125) where Adam (and Eve) failed’ (Dial. 124). The etymology in Dial. 125 of the name Israel, he suggests, is the link which in Justin’s mind connects the otherwise disparate Dial. 124–5 with Dial. 123 (1987: 188). Can we identify Justin’s source? Skarsaune adduces Sifre to Deuteronomy, a halakhic midrash from the school of Rabbi Akiba, as illustrative of the views counter-attacked by Justin at Dial. 120–1, namely, that the election of Israel began with Jacob (1987: 346–7). Sifre to Deuteronomy also provides a parallel to Justin’s interpretation of Psalm 82: 6 (see above, Chapter 3. 4). We find there the same application of the psalm to Adam and Eve together with an episodic approach to sin in which the process of alienation from God that began with the Fall is reversible in principle through obedience. Justin, or more probably the testimony source on which he relies,37 was almost certainly familiar with Sifre to Deuteronomy. As a testimony, its interpretation of Ps. 82: 6 provided the setting for the Christian kerygma: Adam and Eve’s failure was reversed by the success of Christ. What Justin seems to have contributed himself is the connection with the Johannine or Pauline children 37 The evidence for Justin’s testimony source lies in the textual criticism of Ps. 82: 6–7 which he offers. He quotes from the Jewish version of the psalm, which appears to have said ‘you will die like a man (µα˜ ν )αυτ- θεοποι!σN), enabling us to become a holy race and partakers of the divine nature (Ep. Adelph. 4, PG 26. 1077a). And to Maximus he says: ‘we are deified not by partaking of the body of some man, but by receiving the body of the Word himself (αλλα` αυτο το Λγου σµα λαµβα´νοντε θεοποιου´µεθα) (Ep. Max. 2, PG 26. 1088c). The last phrase seems to be a veiled reference to the Eucharist. If so, it is the only specific mention of the role of the Eucharist in deification. To sum up, the technical vocabulary of deification is used much more frequently by Athanasius than by his predecessors. It is also used in a different way. In the first place Clement, Origen, and Eusebius use θεοποιω neat, as it were, allowing the context to supply the meaning, whereas Athanasius frequently couples it with an explanatory synonym. This may simply be a stylistic trait but nevertheless the list is revealing: υ2οποησεν . . . κα

The Alexandrian Tradition II

177

θεοποησε (CA 1. 38, Bright 40)––υ2οποι!θησαν κα θεοποι!θησαν (CA 1. 39, Bright 41)––ανακαινισθναι κα θεοποιηθναι (CA 2. 47, Bright 117)––> σωτηρα κα > θεοποησι (CA 2. 70, Bright 140)––α8για´σN κα θεοποι!σN (CA 3. 39, Bright 194)––θεοποησι κα χα´ρι (CA 3. 53, Bright 206)–– *περαναβανον . . . κα θεοποιου´µενον (CA 3. 53, Bright 206)––θεοποιν κα υ2οποιν (Ep. Serap 1. 25, PG 26. 589b)––τ# θεοποι#ν κα φωτιστικν (De Syn. 51, PG 26. 784b)––θεοποιεται κα ζωοποιεται (ibid.). Adoption, renewal, salvation, sanctification, grace, transcendence, illumination, and vivification are all presented as equivalents to deification. Although the concept itself is not controversial, Athanasius may well be intending to exclude any possibility of misunderstanding. Secondly, Athanasius brings deification into line with post-Nicene orthodoxy. Origen and Eusebius had both characterized the Son as deified by the Father, Origen also holding that the Son is θε# λγο . . . θεοποι (Sel. in Ez. 1. 3, PG 13. 769b). Athanasius believed the second proposition to be inconsistent with the first. The Son can only deify if he is not himself the recipient of deification; it is simply his flesh that is deified. Henceforth, the need to place the Son on one side or the other of the ‘genetic’/‘agenetic’ divide will force theologians to align themselves either with Athanasius or with Arius. Thirdly, the subject of human deification is now no longer nous but the flesh. Origen could speak of the nous or the diathesis being deified (In Jo. 32. 27. 339, GCS iv. 472. 34; Orat. 25. 2, GCS ii. 358. 23), but with Athanasius it is always the ‘body’, ‘flesh’, or ‘man’. Origen had also said, however, that the Logos ‘deified the human nature which he assumed’ (‘deificavit quam susceperat humanam naturam’) (In Matt. ser. 33, GCS xi. 61. 7 f.). This notion is the foundation of the whole of Athanasius’ thinking. It enables him to apply the concept of deification consistently both to the Son and to men. This double application accounts for the two aspects or ‘moments’ of deification which we find in his writings.13 The first is the deification of the flesh by the Logos in the Incarnation: the Logos deified that which he put on; he made the body immortal; he renewed and exalted human nature. The second is the deification of men by the Son. It arises from the first because in the Incarnation it is ‘we’ who have been assumed by the Logos through his flesh, for the flesh is a generic reality in which all men share. But this deification, which in principle is a deification of all men, has to be appropriated by individual believers. It is through baptism that the Son is encountered as the deifying and enlightening power of the Father. The Spirit also plays an essential role, for only those in whom the Spirit comes to dwell are deified. The Spirit enables us to receive the deifying body of the Word. 13 The expression ‘moment’ is that of Bilaniuk (1973: 351). Bilaniuk also identifies a third ‘moment’, viz. ‘divinization (as a result of the first two) of the whole cosmos’. This last ‘moment’, however, is not associated by Athanasius with the term θεοποιω.

178

The Alexandrian Tradition II

Lastly, Athanasius expands the content of deification, moving the emphasis away from immortality and incorruption to the exaltation of human nature through participation in the life of God. Deification is certainly liberation from death and corruption, but it is also adoption as sons, the renewal of our nature by participation in the divine nature, a sharing in the bond of love of the Father and the Son, and finally entry into the kingdom of heaven in the likeness of Christ. The most recent writers on Athanasius are rightly united in finding his idea of deification complex and rich.14 Dalmais, moreover, detects a development from the divine knowledge and incorruptibility of the De Incarnatione to a less intellectualist conception in the later, anti-Arian writings (1954–7: 1380–1). The evidence seems to support this view. In struggling with the Arian objections from Scripture, Athanasius develops the dynamic aspects of deification, the perfecting and transcending of human nature. These aspects are not absent from earlier writers. Irenaeus in particular had already identified deification with adoption and had stressed humanity’s participation in the life of God. Origen had developed the nature of this participation as a reaching out of God to man together with man’s free response to God. In Athanasius Irenaeus’ teaching on adoption has been combined with Origen’s doctrine of a dynamic participation in the Trinity to produce a concept of deification as the penetration and transformation of mortal human nature by the eternal Son which enables it to participate in the light and life of the Father.

(d) Immanence and Transcendence Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are aspects of Athanasius’ concept of deification which cause unease to the modern mind. Those who are particularly struck by his emphasis on the transmission of incorruption and immortality through the Incarnation to the rest of humanity as a result of 14 Demetropoulos (1954: 118) sees adoption, redemption, sanctification, renewal, and perfection as equivalent to deification but temporally prior to it; i.e. he reserves the term θεοποησι for the eschatological fulfilment of deification. For Roldanus (1968: 166–9) the chief elements of deification are (i) an incorruptibility which implies a sharing in the divine life; and (ii) a liberation from sin and death which results from man’s re-creation. Norman (1980: 139–71), arguing that deification is more than a Greek attainment of immortality and also more than an ethical attainment of likeness, lists eight different aspects: (i) the renewal of humankind in the image of God; (ii) the transcendence of human nature; (iii) the resurrection of the flesh and immortality of the body; (iv) the attainment of incorruptibility, impassibility, and unchangeableness; (v) participation in the divine nature and qualities of Godliness; (vi) attainment of the knowledge of God; (vii) the inheritance of divine glory; and (viii) ascent to the heavenly kingdom. Hess (1993: 371) sees divinization as one of a cluster of eight closely related motifs: renewal, divinization, partaking of God, union, adoption as sons, exaltation, sanctification, and perfection in Christ. He notes the anti-Arian polemical purpose of the divinization motif and its absence from Athanasius’ Festal Letters, which he takes as evidence that deification is not a ‘central or controlling motif’. But cf. Cyril of Alexandria, who does not refer to deification in his Festal Letters either.

The Alexandrian Tradition II

179

the solidarity of the human race have spoken of an unsatisfactory ‘physical’ doctrine of redemption.15 When he discusses redemption, Athanasius speaks of the body or the flesh of Christ but not his soul. The deification of man therefore seems to ignore the soul, our solidarity with Christ resting simply on the basis of the body. Another problem which has been discussed is whether Athanasius’ soteriology is compatible with his ontology, that is to say, whether he has shown convincingly how mortal man can share in an utterly transcendent God (Norman 1980: 178–80, 199–203). The two questions are related, for in Athanasius’ view the deified flesh of Christ is the very means by which mortal man does actually approach God. In order to form a judgement on these questions it will be helpful to examine briefly the place of deification within the wider framework of Athanasius’ anthropology and soteriology. Athanasius considers creation specifically only in his earliest work, where he gives two accounts of it, both of which may be considered a commentary on Genesis 1: 26. In Contra Gentes 3 God, who is beyond every substance (*περκεινα πα´ση ουσα), is said to have created man after his own image. Unlike Origen, Athanasius distinguishes not between image and likeness but only between ικ(ν and κατ  ε'κνα, man having been created in the image of the Image, who is the Logos. In his original state man possessed a contemplative understanding of intelligible reality (τν &ντων), a conception and knowledge of God’s eternity, a power to converse with God, and an idyllic and truly blessed immortal life. Adam’s life in Paradise was characterized by parrêsia and theôria, his soul being able to contemplate God through its purity. The Fall took place when the nous turned away from intelligible reality and began to cleave to the body and its desires, preferring its own apparent good to the contemplation of the divine. The result was the imprisoning of the soul in the pleasures of the body. The interior mirror, in which the soul was able to contemplate the image of the Father (i.e. the Logos), became obscured by the complexity of fleshly desires (cf. Louth 1981: 77–80). Hence the rise of idolatry. The second account in De Incarnatione 3 has been described as historical and biblical in comparison with the timeless, Platonic account in the Contra Gentes, but in fact the perspective is very similar.16 Perhaps in the description 15 The opinion that Athanasius taught a one-sidedly ‘physische Erlösungslehre’ was first expressed by Harnack, although he did temper it somewhat: ‘Yet the view of Athanasius was not simply naturalistic; incorruptibleness rather included the elements of goodness, love, and wisdom; a renewal affecting the inner nature of man was also involved. But it was not possible for Athanasius to expound this systematically’ (1894–7: iii. 292 n. 3). Harnack’s opinion, in spite of having been disputed by Bornhäuser, Roldanus, and others, remains the text-book judgement on Athanasius (cf. Tixeront 1910–16: ii. 150; Kelly 1977: 377–80). 16 Louth 1975: 227–31. While endorsing his analysis, Louth no longer accepts his conclusion that Athanasius flirted with Neoplatonism in the CG only to reject it outright in the De Inc. (cf. Louth 1981: 77 n. 7).

180

The Alexandrian Tradition II

of the effects of the Fall in the second account there is less emphasis on the loss of contemplation and more on the loss of immortality. In Paradise man had the promise of incorruption in heaven. He had been created from nothing and was therefore by nature mortal. But his natural corruption was offset by his contemplation of God, and had he not fallen he would have remained incorruptible and, as Psalm 82: 6–7 declares, would have lived as a god: ‘I said you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High, but you die like men and fall as one of the princes.’ The recovery of the divine life lost by the Fall was made possible when the Logos became incarnate, ascribing to the flesh the properties of his own divine life. Through participation in this deified flesh men may once again be called gods. Unlike Clement and Origen, however, Athanasius calls men gods infrequently and always with reference to Psalm 82: 6 or John 10: 35.17 In response to the Arian claim that the perfect become exactly like Christ he is careful to explain the biblical references to men as gods in a way which plays down any implication that men really are transformed into gods. Gods in the Christian sense are those who on the ontological level have been united to the Logos by the grace of adoption, while on the moral level they have become like God through imitation and progress in virtue.18 In the Contra Arianos Athanasius declares that only the Logos is θε# αληθιν, whereas those referred to as gods in Scripture are gods simply by grace, a grace which they receive from the Father by participation through the Spirit in the Logos (CA 1. 9, Bright 9). If there are sons and gods in Scripture it is because they were adopted and deified by the Logos (CA 1. 39, Bright 40–1). Such gods by deification are not to be identified with God himself, whether God be the Father or the Son. The Lord does tell us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5: 48), but this does not mean we become the same as the Father, for we are creatures who have been created out of nothing. There is one Son and God by nature; we become sons and gods by grace (CA 3. 19, Bright 173–4). The Logos is God, and eternal life and truth, ‘but we become virtuous and sons by imitation’ (cf. Eusebius, De eccles. theol. 3. 19, PG 24. 1044a). And so ‘we are sons, but not as the Son; and gods but not as he is’ (CA 3. 20, Bright 174–5). When the Lord prays to his Father that ‘they may become one as we are one’ (John 17: 21) it is therefore an analogous unity which he desires for men. The Father and the Son are united by essence and nature; the Son and believers are united by adoption and grace. In Athanasius’ other writings, too, when he refers to the scriptural designa17 De Inc. 4. 32, Thomson 144; CA 1. 9, Bright 9; CA 1. 39, Bright 40; CA 3. 19–20, Bright 173–4; Ep. Serap. 1. 4, PG 26. 613c; Ep. Afros 7, PG 26. 1041c . 18 The two levels are juxtaposed in Ep. Afros 7, PG 26. 1041bc.

The Alexandrian Tradition II

181

tion of men as gods it is to stress the dissimilarity between men and God. To Serapion he writes: ‘If some have been called gods, this is not by nature but by participation in the Son’ (Ep. Serap. 2. 4, PG 26. 613c). And to the bishops of Egypt and Libya: ‘calling gods those who, though creatures, have become partakers of the Word’ . . . (Ep. Afros 7, PG 26. 1041c). The designation of men as gods was used by the Arians to minimize the difference between the perfect and the Son. Athanasius, unlike Origen, is therefore always cautious in ascribing divinity to men. With this stress on the radical dissimilarity between God and men, how is it that we are deified? The answer, as already indicated in the last two quotations, is by participation.19 In the Letter to the bishops of Egypt and Libya Athanasius states, like Justin and Origen, that the participant is by definition different from the participated, but in his anxiety to counter Arianism he goes on to deny that there is even any similarity between them (Ep. Afros 7, PG 26. 1041c; cf. Ep. Serap. 1. 23, PG 26. 584c). If this were strictly so, it is difficult to see how participation could take place at all. To Serapion, however, he declares that all things receive the characteristics of that in which they participate (Ep. Serap. 1. 23–4, PG 26. 584b–588b). By participating in the Spirit we become holy; by participating in the Logos we are able to contemplate the Father. In his earliest work Athanasius refers to a participation which is purely ontological, all rational creatures participating in the Logos by virtue of their rationality (De Inc. 6. 13, Thomson 148). In his anti-Arian writings, however, he makes no further reference to this, preferring instead to appeal to the dynamic form of participation which had been developed by Origen, though rejecting the notion that the Son participates in the Father, because of its subordinationism. In the De Decretis Athanasius argues against the opinion he had heard Eusebius express that the Son alone participates in the Father while we participate in the Son (De Decret. 9–10, PG 25. 432cd). If that were so, we would then be the Son’s sons. Rather, we are sons of the same Father as the Son is, our sonship being granted to us in accordance with our virtue, so that some sit on the twelve thrones, while others occupy lower places. Yet in a deeper sense the Son does participate in the Father. In the Contra Arianos Athanasius equates a complete participation in the Father (τ# . . . :λω µετχεσθαι τ#ν θε#ν) with the Father’s begetting (CA 1. 16, Bright 17). Since the essence of God cannot be divided, his begetting the Son means that he communicates himself wholly to the Son. When men partake of God, they therefore partake of the Son, ‘for that which is partaken of the Father is the Son’ (CA 1. 16, Bright 17; cf. De Syn. 51, PG 26. 784ab; De Decret. 24, PG 25. 460ab). Thus when men are said to ‘participate 19 On participation in Athanasius the most extensive treatment is in Anatolios 1998 (see esp. 104–9). See also Bornhäuser 1903: 29–30; Bernard 1952: 32–9, 116–22; Balás 1966: 11–12; Norman 1980: 101–6, 113–15; Kolp 1982; Williams 1987: 215–29; and Pettersen 1995: 173–5.

182

The Alexandrian Tradition II

in the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1: 4), it means that the Son communicates himself to them.20 This dynamic participation in the Logos is only possible because of the Incarnation. When the Logos assumed a human body, he became the subject (by the communicatio idiomatum) of what the body experienced. ‘For what the human body of the Logos suffered, this the Logos, being united to the body, ascribed to himself in order that we might be enabled to participate in the deity of the Logos’ (Ep. Epict. 6, PG 26. 1060c). By participating in the deified humanity of the Logos we participate in his impassible divinity, because the flesh has been endowed with divinity, just as the divinity has been endowed with humanity. This is the incorruption and immortality in which, according to Paul, we clothe ourselves (1 Cor. 15: 53) (cf. CA 3. 33, Bright 188). The image of ‘clothing’ alludes to baptism. Athanasius refers directly to baptism infrequently.21 But when the occasion demands the rite can provide him with an argument for the homoousion of the Son from ecclesiastical practice. In the first book of Contra Arianos he questions how the Arians can call God ‘agenetic’ (αγνητο) in preference to ‘Father’. It is contrary to the way Christ taught us to baptize (cf. Matt. 28: 19). For it is only when God is called ‘Father’ that we, through his Logos, can become ‘sons’ (CA 1. 34). This idea is developed more fully in the second book. It is only because the Son co-operated with the Father in creating in the first place (as indicated by the first person plural in Gen. 1: 26) that he also has a role with him in the renewal of creation through ‘the holy bath of baptism’. If God had made Christ a Son, asks Athanasius, why does he not make us sons too in the same way without need of the baptismal formula invoking the Son and the Spirit as well? It is a fact of the Church’s life that naming the Father in the baptismal rite also entails naming the Son. If the purpose of baptism is to join us to the Godhead (9να συναφθµεν τA θετητι), what point is there in our being made one with the Son (9να )νωθµεν τ- υ2-) if he is a creature like ourselves? If God had made the Son a son, then he could have made us sons too in the same way. Our access to the Godhead through Christ in baptism depends on his being the Father’s ‘only own and true Son deriving from his essential being’ (/ µνο Qδιο κα γν!σιο κ τ ουσα αυτο Sν 20 2 Peter 1: 4 had been cited previously by Origen, but in a different way to buttress the idea of becoming like God by the attainment of virtue. Athanasius cites the text six times: CA 1. 16, Bright 17; CA 3. 40, Bright 194; Ep. Serap. 1. 23, PG 26. 585b; Ep. Serap. 1. 24, 585c; V. Ant. 74, 945c; Ep. Adelph. 4, 1077a. The NPNF translation also detects an allusion in the Festal Letters (which are preserved only in a Syriac version) at Ep. 5. 5. On each occasion Athanasius uses the text to support the notion of the believer’s dynamic participation in God. This participation was made possible by the Incarnation (V. Ant. 74), which transferred our nature to the Logos (Ep. Adelph. 4). It is appropriated by baptism (Ep. Serap. 1. 23 and 1. 24) and brings with it possession of the Son (CA 1. 16) and power over demons (CA 3. 40). Cf. Kolp 1982; Russell 1988. 21 De Decr. 31; CA 1. 34; CA 2. 41; Ep. Serap. 4. 9, 12, 13. Allusions, however, to being born again and restored in the image (cf. De Inc. 14) are relatively common.

The Alexandrian Tradition II

183

Υ2), which is why he is named along with the Father in the baptismal formula (CA 2. 41, Bright 110–11). Our union with the Son through baptism is made possible by the Spirit. The Spirit is the chrism and the seal with which the Logos anoints and seals us, making us thus through the holy oil the fragrance of Christ (Ep. Serap. 1. 23, PG 26. 585a). Another way of putting it is to say that the Son is life-initself (αυτοζω!), the Spirit is life-giving (ζωοποιν), and the faithful are made-alive (ζωοποιου´µενοι) (Ep. Serap. 1. 23, 584b). Because the Spirit is himself fully divine he is able to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1: 4), that is, of Christ. Through him we are called partakers of Christ and partakers of God (µτοχοι Χριστο κα µτοχοι Θεο) (Ep. Serap. 1. 24, 585c). The Eucharist, like baptism, belongs to the Christian’s ecclesial life. But Athanasius does not draw on it for anti-Arian arguments. We find it referred to, rather, in the Festal Letters which he sent each year to his suffragan bishops to be read to the faithful at the beginning of Lent. The divine Word is a heavenly food which nourishes our souls (Ep. 1. 7; 4. 4; 5. 5). The coming feast of Easter is the fulfilment of the types and shadows of the Jewish Passover (Ep. 4. 3). We no longer eat the flesh of a lamb but Christ’s own flesh (Ep. 4. 4). Yet the Christian Eucharist is itself a symbol of ‘the great and heavenly supper to which we are called if we are spotless within and without’ (Ep. 40; trans. Payne Smith, NPNF). In the letter for the year 373, the last of his episcopate, Athanasius declares that ‘as all the old things were a type of the new, so the festival that now is, is a type of the joy which is above’ (Ep. 45; trans. Payne Smith, NPNF). It is with its eschatological fulfilment in mind that we are to approach the celebration of Easter. The fruits of participation in Christ are the communication of divine life and the contemplation of the Father.22 Exactly how the divine life is transmitted to us through the communicatio idiomatum of the incarnate Logos, we becoming the Son’s ‘own’ as the Son is the Father’s ‘own’, is explained in a passage of the Contra Arianos: When the flesh was born from Mary the Theotokos, he [the Logos] is said to have been born, who furnishes to others an origin of being, in order that he may transfer our nature into himself (9να τ4ν >µν ε' )αυτ#ν µεταθA γνεσιν), and we may no longer, as mere earth, return to earth, but as being joined to the Logos from heaven, may be carried to heaven by him. In a similar manner he has therefore not unreasonably transferred to himself the other affections of the body also, that we, no longer as being men, but as proper to the Logos, may have a share in eternal life (9να µηκτι 22 Cf. Anatolios: ‘With reference to the humanity of Christ, Athanasius’s point is that we are able to be saved and deified because Christ has securely received grace in a human way on our behalf, and has thus rendered us receptive of the Spirit by his own human reception of it . . . Our deifying reception of the Spirit is thus derived from Christ’s human receptivity’ (1998: 159).

184

The Alexandrian Tradition II

µακαρα διαγωγ4 ν τ- µλλοντι α'νι (De Sp. S. 1. 2, PG 32. 69b). The Son became incarnate and performed his saving work in order to make the attainment of this telos possible, the purpose of the divine economy being ‘our return to the likeness of God from the alienation brought about by disobedience’ Hom. in Ps. 48. 1, PG 29. 432b). Our relationship to Christ is therefore seen not so much in terms of incorporation into him as in imitation of him: ‘for perfection of life the imitation of Christ is necessary’ (De Sp. S. 15. 35, PG 32. 128c). Such an imitation, which brings about a likeness to God through his Son, is twofold. It implies not only following Christ’s example of gentleness, humility, and endurance of suffering, but also symbolically sharing in his death and burial through baptism (ibid., 129ab). The role of the Holy Spirit is equally essential: Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascent into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our participation in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all ‘fullness of blessing’ both in this world and in the world to come. . . . (De Sp. S. 15. 36, PG 32. 132b; trans. Jackson, modified)

The Holy Spirit through his sanctifying power makes human beings spiritual, conforms them to the image of the Son, and raises them up to the archetypal beauty itself (De Sp. S. 9. 23, 109ab). The first fruits of this are found in baptism, but the full enjoyment is experienced only in heaven. All this must be accompanied by moral effort. True to his monastic vocation, Basil never loses sight of the need for asceticism. The ‘gods’ are those who have attained perfection in virtue. Yet this perfection is not achieved without the Spirit. In the first place, no one can set out on the path to perfection without self-knowledge as a preliminary: ‘be attentive to

212

The Cappadocian Approach

yourself so that you can be attentive to God’ (πρσεχε οYν σεαυτ- 9να προσχη Θε-) (Hom. Attende tibi ipsi 8, PG 31. 217b). Moreover, the overcoming of the passions is necessary before the Spirit can be free to work: as an eye full of dirt cannot apprehend visible things, he says, so a heart stained with dirt cannot apprehend the truth (Hom. in Ps. 33. 3, PG 29. 357c). But once the foundations are laid, the Spirit works a gradual transformation in us as ‘the inner man is renewed day by day’ (Hom. in Ps. 44. 2, PG 29. 389c). The highest degree of perfection results in the vision of God. There are two faculties in the nous, says Basil, an evil one which draws men towards apostasy, and a good or divine faculty ‘which brings us to the likeness of God’. If the nous assents to this ‘diviner part’ and accepts the gifts of the Spirit, it becomes perceptive of the divine. Mingled with the deity of the Spirit, it then ‘beholds the divine beauty, though only so far as grace imparts and its nature receives’ (Ep. 233. 1). This may begin even in this life, as the examples of Moses and the three disciples on Mount Tabor witness (Hex. 1. 1, PG 29. 5c; Hom. in Ps. 44. 5, PG 29. 400cd). Indeed Basil himself had had experience of this, as Gregory of Nyssa suggests in his encomium on his brother (PG 46. 800d, 804bc, 808c). (d) What is the Role of the Sacraments? This experience is also described in terms of taste. The eucharistic bread is the bread of life through which the believer comes to enjoy communion with God. The Eucharist is a symbol and real pledge of the ‘taste’ of God in heaven (Hom. in Ps. 33. 6, PG 29. 364c). In spite of this foretaste, however, Basil’s view of deification is essentially eschatological. He mentions the deification in principle which takes place at baptism, but does not develop it. The ‘gods’ are those who have entered into the kingdom of heaven, whose beatitude Basil describes, in imagery combining Platonic and biblical elements, as vision of beauty, participation in light, and communion with the angels and with God. Yet there is a final stage of deification which also involves the body. Although in Basil’s view the image of God resides in the nous, it is not the nous alone which is deified (Ep. 233. 1). In the end the whole man is transformed: first the psyche is rendered spiritual through purification and the ascent to God; then, at the resurrection, the body itself becomes like the body of Christ as death is finally defeated and corruption is swallowed up by incorruption. (e) Conclusion Although Basil was a friend of Athanasius and an admirer of Origen, his teaching on deification seems to owe more to Clement than to the more recent Alexandrians. Like Origen he presents deification as the gradual spiritualization of men and reserves the term ‘gods’ for their final state. Like Athanasius he proves the divinity of the Spirit from his power to deify. But

The Cappadocian Approach

213

the transformation of the flesh in the Athanasian manner does not appear in Basil’s writings. Moreover, the ‘gods’ are not those who have been adopted by baptism but those who have become perfect through the practice of virtue. Basil is altogether more Platonic. In this, as in his apophaticism, he resembles Clement. In Basil’s view, when men contemplate God, they look up into an incomprehensible beauty. They merely become ‘like’ God through imitating his moral excellence, the term ‘gods’ being used either in a titular sense or else with reference to man’s eschatological state. How far this employment of a Platonizing tradition is able to provide a satisfactory bridge between the ‘genetic’ and agenetic’ orders of reality can only be assessed after a consideration of the other two Cappadocians, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.

2. Gregory of Nazianzus Like his friend Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus belonged to the provincial aristocracy of Cappadocia.6 He was born in 329/30 in the little city of Nazianzus, of which his father, also called Gregory, was the bishop. After an excellent education, crowned by a ten-year stay in Athens (348–58), where he studied with Basil under the Christian rhetorician Prohaeresius,7 he returned to Cappadocia to live a life of ascetic retreat on his family estates. The ‘philosophical life’ remained his first love. He was forced into the priesthood by his father, reluctantly accepted an episcopal appointment from Basil, and was persuaded by his friends to think that he could make an important contribution to the Nicene cause as bishop of Constantinople. His clerical career, however, gave him little satisfaction. The happiest period of his life was probably the four years spent in contemplative seclusion at St Thecla’s in Seleucia (375–8) before his call to Constantinople. Gregory appeals to the deification of the Christian as theological support for the homoousion of the Son and the Spirit almost as frequently as Athanasius.8 But whereas Athanasius dwells on the idea of participation in 6 Gregory has been the subject of good modern biographies by Gallay (1943a), Bernardi (1995), and McGuckin (2001). He is also the first person in antiquity to leave us an autobiographical work, his poem De vita sua (Carm. ii. 1. 11). Begun in 382 as an apologia for the failure of his episcopal mission in Constantinople, it offers us a unique insight into his inner life. Only Augustine in his Confessions (written c. 398–400) is as revealing. 7 A few years later the pagan sophist Eunapius also became a student of Prohaeresius, whose powerful oratory and youthfulness of soul (he was 87 at the time) so impressed Eunapius that he says he hung on his words ‘as he might [of] some god who had revealed himself unsummoned and without ceremony’ (V. Soph. 485; trans. Wright). 8 The most comprehensive study of deification in Gregory of Nazianzus is Winslow 1979. Although occasionally criticized (e.g. Ellverson 1981: 22–7) for interpreting Gregory’s soteriology too much in terms of deification, it is still indispensable. See also Gross 1938: 244–50; Theodorou 1956: 87–90; Althaus 1972; Moreschini 1997: 34–6.

214

The Cappadocian Approach

the divine life, Gregory shifts the emphasis to the imitation of Christ. The category of ‘participation’ is not important to him; nor does he ever appeal to 2 Peter 1: 4. But imitation does not mean following an external model. It means that by becoming like the incarnate Son through the sacraments and the practice of ‘philosophy’, human beings can eventually transcend their earthly limitations, with the result that they are transformed by ‘mingling’–– to use one of Gregory’s favourite expressions––with the divine light. Yet deification is never something which human beings accomplish in any literal sense. The gap between uncreated and created is never bridged. Indeed so aware is Gregory of this gap, that there are indications in his writings of the concept of perpetual progress towards God which is developed so strikingly by Gregory of Nyssa. (a) Vocabulary Gregory has a distinctive vocabulary which appears particularly in his mature writings. Among the early Greek Fathers only Athanasius employs deification terms more frequently, yet Gregory’s vocabulary is quite different. He uses θεοποιω only once, in an early oration, preferring on three further occasions to resolve it into θε#ν ποιω.9 He also uses θε# γγνοµαι a number of times10 and θε# Lσοµαι once (Or. 2. 17, PG 35. 481b), along with two poetic variations: θε#ν τευ´χω (Carm. i. 1. 3. 4, PG 37. 408) and θε#ν τελω (Carm. i. 2. 14. 92, PG 37. 762). His favourite verb, however, is θεω, which he uses very frequently.11 The only noun he uses is the neologism θωσι. This word first appears in the Fourth Oration, the First Invective against Julian, which was delivered shortly after Julian’s death in July 363, and is used again on nine further occasions.12 The adjective θεοποι is used twice (Or. 3. 1, PG 35. 517a; Carm. ii. 2. 7. 69, PG 37. 1556a). 9 Θεοποιω: Or. 2. 73, PG 35. 481b, delivered shortly after Easter 362. Mason’s text of Or. 31. 29 (1899: 184. 6), following the Benedictine reading (PG 36. 168a), has a further instance. Gallay and Jourjon (SC 250), however, following a better MS tradition, print θεον here instead of θεοποιον. Θε#ν ποιω: Or. 2. 22, PG 35. 432b; Or. 30. 14, PG 36. 121c; Or. 31. 4, PG 36. 137b. 10 Or. 1. 5, PG 35. 397c; Or. 7. 22, 784d; Or. 7. 23, 785b; Or. 14. 23, 888a; Or. 17. 9, 976d; Or. 25. 2, 1201a, Or. 29. 19, PG 36. 100a; Or. 30. 3, 105c; Or. 30. 21, 133a; Or. 36. 11, 277c; Or. 40. 5, 421b; Or. 42. 17, 477c. 11 Or. 4. 59, PG 35. 581; Or. 31. 28, 165a; Or. 31. 29, 168a; Or. 34. 12, 252c; Or. 38. 11, 324a; Or. 38. 13, 325c; Or. 40. 42, 420a; Or. 41. 9, 441b; Or. 45. 9, 633d; Ep. 6. 3, PG 37. 29c; Ep. 101, 180a, 185c; Carm. i. 1. 10. 61, 469a; Carm. i. 2. 10. 630, 725a; Carm. i, 2. 17. 2, 781a; Carm. i, 2. 33, 934a. The Benedictine text has a further instance at Or. 30. 12, PG 36. 117c (θεωθν, apparently speaking of the will of the divine Son as deified) which Mason reproduces even though it puzzled him (p. 126, n. 1). Gallay and Jourjon (SC 250) restore the correct reading: θεθεν ‘from God’. 12 Or. 4. 71, PG 35. 593b; Or. 4. 124, 664c; Or. 11. 5, 837c; Or. 17. 9, 976d; Or. 21. 2, 1084c; Or. 23. 12, 1164c; Or. 25. 2, 1200b; Or. 25. 16, 1221b; Or. 39. 16, PG 36. 353b; Carm. i. 2. 34. 61, PG 37. 957a. Even Winslow does not appreciate the novelty of the term: ‘We would point out first of all, that no Christian theologian prior to Gregory employed the term theosis (or the idea contained in the term) with as much consistency and frequency as did he’ (1979: 179). For the dating of the Orations see Gallay 1943a: 252–3, and McGuckin 2001.

The Cappadocian Approach

215

Gregory does not use θεοποιω or θε#ν ποιω in his christological discussions. Nevertheless, the reasons for his verbal preferences appear to be more stylistic than doctrinal. His style, as is well known, displays many of the characteristics of Second Sophistic, combining Attic diction with neologisms and archaisms for striking effect.13 Θε#ν ποιω is clearly an archaism. Θωσι is a back-formation from Gregory’s preferred verb, θεω. It is first used when a homoeoteleuton is required: αναβα´σεω κα θε(σεω (Or. 4. 71, PG 35. 593b; cf. 21. 2, 1084c). Later it is used for the sake of assonance: > θετη . . . > θωσι (Or. 25. 16, PG 35. 1221b). On a further occasion Gregory uses the word to present a striking oxymoron: τA θε(σει θε (Or. 39. 16, PG 36. 353b). Although θωσι is the usual term by which deification came to be known among the Byzantines, it did not prove immediately popular. It was not taken up again until Dionysius the Areopagite used it in the late fifth century, and only became fully assimilated with Maximus the Confessor in the seventh. (b) Texts Gregory’s first references to deification occur in the orations he delivered in 362 on his return to Nazianzus after his flight to Pontus. The situation was delicate. Gregory had fled to Annesoi to join Basil in a life of monastic retirement only a few days after his father had bullied him into ordination on Christmas day 361.14 By the following spring Gregory the Elder was in serious difficulties, a group of ascetic dissidents in his diocese having rejected his authority on the grounds of heresy. He had apparently compromised himself doctrinally by making a public statement not acceptable to the strict Nicenes.15 Gregory returned at his father’s request to repair the damage. His task was twofold: to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the people of Nazianzus (his flight must have looked like a repudiation of his ordination), and to defend his father’s authority by establishing his own spiritual and intellectual credentials. The fundamental purpose of the Christian life is set out in the First Oration (delivered on Easter Sunday 362) in terms of the exchange principle: ‘Let us become as Christ is, since Christ became as we are; let us become gods for his sake, since he became man for our sake’.16 The best gift that we can give On Gregory’s style see Guignet 1911; Gallay 1943b; Ruether 1969, esp. 55–9. The date of Gregory’s ordination, Christmas day 361, was deduced (by Gallay) from Gregory’s statement in his First Oration that ‘a mystery anointed me’ and ‘on a mystery I return’ (Or. 1. 2). Easter 362 is secure as the date for the First Oration. But Bernardi’s argument (SC 247: 16–17) that the first mystery was simply Gregory’s ordination has been widely accepted. Here I follow McGuckin (2001: 101) in staying with Gallay’s date. It is not certain whether Christmas day in this period in Cappadocia was 25 December or 6 January (McGuckin 2001: 101 n. 58). 15 For a discussion of the problem see McGuckin 2001: 108–9. 16 Or. 1. 5. Winslow comments: ‘Was it a typographical error or an unconscious distrust of the vocabulary of theosis which led the NPNF to translate theoi in this passage as “God’s”?’ (1979: 91). 13 14

216

The Cappadocian Approach

to God is ourselves, ‘becoming for his sake all that he became for ours’ (Or. 1. 5). The rest of the oration is devoted to commending his father to the people as a standard of virtue and perfection of the priesthood, who, like a venerable Abraham, brings his only son as a willing sacrifice. More was needed, however, to explain Gregory’s actions than a typological allusion to himself as an obedient Isaac. In the Third Oration, preached on the following Sunday to a half-empty church, he associates himself more closely with his father. His congregation is invited to renew their obedience and love for ‘both the old and the new shepherd’, Gregory the Elder and his son. Yet Gregory does not hide the fact that for him the attractions of the contemplative life are stronger than those of an ecclesiastical career. He describes the monastic solitude he had enjoyed in Pontus as ‘co-worker and mother of the divine ascent and producer of deification’ (συ´νεργον κα µητρα τ θεα αναβα´σεω, κα θεοποιν) (Or. 3. 1). It was from this that the call from Nazianzus had torn him away. Throughout his œuvre Gregory celebrates the ascetic life in similar terms. Writing to Basil in Pontus in 361, he says (with reference to Job 29: 2): ‘Who will bring back to me the intimacy and unanimity of the brethren who were by you being deified and exalted?’ (τ αδελφν συµφυKαν κα συµψυχαν, τν *π# σο θεουµνων κα *ψουµνων;) (Ep. 6. 3). A secluded life has the power to deify by bodily purification (Carm. i. 2. 10. 630), and by not allowing the mind to be mingled with mundane things (Carm. 1. 2. 17. 1–2; cf. i. 2. 33. 89–90). In the Fourth Oration, the First Invective against Julian, delivered at the end of 363 or in 364 (which marks the first appearance of the word θωσι), Gregory holds up for admiration the Christian ascetics, who are immortal through mortifying themselves; who are united (συνηµνου) with God through release [from the body]; who are separated from desire and are joined to that love which is divine and dispassionate; to whom belongs the fountain of light and who enjoy even now its radiance; to whom belong the angelic psalmodies, the night-long services and the departure of the intellect to God, rapt up before its time (> περ νο πρ# θε#ν κδηµα προαρπαζοµνου);17 to whom belong purification and being purified; who know no limit in ascending or in being deified (µηδ;ν µτρον ε'δτων αναβα´σεω κα θε(σεω). (Or. 4. 71; cf. Origen, C. Cels. 6. 44)

Purification leading to ascent and deification recalls Origen, who speaks of the virtuous, after they have been purified like gold in the fire, ‘progressing to the divine realm’ and being ‘drawn up by the Logos to the supreme blessedness of all’ (C. Cels. 6. 44; trans. Chadwick). But the setting is monastic with its psalmodies and vigils. And the intellect being rapt up to God surely alludes to Paul. 17 This is the first time that the theme of ecstasy has appeared in a Christian author since Paul. Cf. 2 Cor. 12: 2: α8ρπαγντα τ#ν τοιοτον Dω τρτου ουρανο. Cf. also Philo, QG 4. 140; Opif. 70–1 (though in Runia’s judgement (1993: 243) it is not likely that Gregory owned or had easy access to a copy of Philo’s works); Porphyry, V. Plot. 23 (though Porphyry uses )νωθναι rather than α8ρπα´ζεσθαι).

The Cappadocian Approach

217

When Gregory touches on deification in these early orations, Pauline and Platonic strands of thought sometimes mingle together. In the funeral oration for his brother Caesarius (late 368 or early 369) Gregory describes the bliss of those whom death has separated from the body. Having shaken off the fetters which confine the intellect’s wing (τ# τ διανοα πτερν), the soul escapes from the harsh prison of this life and goes to share in God’s glory. The ‘prison’, it should be noted, is ‘this life’, not specifically the body itself. Later the soul will receive back the body that has shared the philosophical life with it, and will communicate its joys to it, because the mortal and the transient will have been swallowed up by life (Or. 7. 21). Here the Platonic image of the soul winging its way to heaven is combined with the Pauline metaphor of death being swallowed up in victory (cf. 1 Cor. 15: 53–4). In the next paragraph an allusion to Psalm 82: 6–7 is introduced. ‘Should we not come to know ourselves?’ asks Gregory. Should we not reject the things of sense (τα` φαινµενα) and fix our gaze on the things of the intellect (τα` νοου´µενα)? Should we not be grieved ‘that we linger in the tombs [i.e. bodies] which we carry about because we die the death of sin like men (cf. Ps. 82: 7) when we have become gods (cf. Ps. 82: 6)?’ (Or. 7. 22). Here Gregory refers to the Platonic soma–sema theme, the body as a tomb, but it is not simply the fact of being embodied that is at issue. Our bodies are tombs only because they house souls which are dead through sin. And although Gregory expresses a Platonizing desire to escape from the body, it is not the escape itself that makes us gods. We linger in the body when we have already become gods (which indicates that Gregory is referring to the effects of baptism) but we can die like men (which means we can succumb to postbaptismal sin). And a little later, when Gregory reflects on the nature of the human state, his understanding of our dual nature is expressed in more openly Pauline terms: ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him’ (Ps. 8: 5)? What is this new mystery concerning me? I am small and great, lowly and exalted, mortal and immortal, earthly and heavenly. I share one condition with the lower world, and another with God; one with the flesh, the other with the Spirit. I must be buried with Christ (cf. Rom. 6: 4), rise with Christ (cf. Rom. 6: 8; Col. 2: 12), be joint heir with Christ (cf. Rom. 8: 17), become a son of God (cf. Rom. 8: 14), a god myself. (Or. 7. 23; cf. Or. 14. 23)

In this passage, which concludes a meditation on the Pauline theme of putting to death the ‘earthly members’ (Col. 3: 5), the Irenaean interpretation of the gods of Psalm 82: 6 as those made sons of God through baptism is not far below the surface. Dying and rising with Christ in baptism so that we come to be ‘in Christ’ makes us sons and gods. The new creation we have

218

The Cappadocian Approach

become enables us to shed the earthly side of our existence and realize our heavenly potential. But the philosophical life, the life of asceticism and contemplation, is also needed to bring about such a realization. In his panegyric on Athanasius, Gregory pronounces blessed whoever through the exercise of reason and the practice of contemplation has separated himself from the veil or cloud of the flesh and has become akin to God and mingled himself with the purest light, so far as is permissible for human nature. Such a man is blessed both through his ascent from this world and through his deification in the next (τ τε ντεθεν αναβα´σεω, κα τ κεσε θε(σεω), which is conferred by true philosophy and by rising above the duality of matter through the unity which is perceived in the Trinity. (Or. 21. 2)

This paragraph embodies the same understanding of the human struggle for self-realization as does Gregory’s funeral oration on his brother, but, as befits the philosophical life, expresses it in a more Platonic idiom. The purpose of the ascetic life is to become like God so far as possible. The means are separation, purification, and ascent. But the goal is different. The One of Neoplatonism has become the Trinity of Christian doctrine, and what is to be achieved is not henôsis, or union, but the transformation of the self expressed by the new Christian term, theôsis. Such a programme was not for the ordinary faithful. To return to Gregory at Nazianzus in 362, the Second Oration, which discusses the philosophical life in some detail, was probably not delivered as a Sunday sermon in his father’s church. More of a treatise than a homily, it has been described as an ‘open letter’ intended for a small circle of readers (Moreschini 1997: 241). Gregory’s purpose is to justify to the clergy of Nazianzus his flight and return, to balance the superiority of the contemplative life against the duties of the priesthood and integrate them, so far as possible, in a single perspective. The Christian pastor is therefore presented as someone called to lead his people to a higher life: Our aim is to endow the soul with wings, to snatch it up from the world and give it to God, and to watch over that which is in the image of God if it remains, or to lead it by the hand if it is in danger, or to restore it if it is ruined, and to make Christ dwell in the heart through the Spirit, and in short to deify (θε#ν ποισαι) and bestow heavenly bliss on whoever has promised heavenly allegiance. (Or. 2. 22)

Although the passage begins with a commonplace of Platonic teaching, the endowing of the soul with wings (cf. in particular Plato, Phaedr. 251b), it ends with an oblique reference to baptism.18 The priest deifies as a spiritual guide, but he also procures the deification of the faithful through the administration of baptism. 18 Bernardi has drawn attention to the allusion in the word syntaxis, which I have translated as ‘heavenly allegiance’, to the baptismal formula of renunciation of Satan and promise (syntaxis) to follow Christ (SC 247: 120 n. 1).

The Cappadocian Approach

219

The priest’s sacramental and liturgical role is made more explicit later in the treatise, when Gregory discusses the awesome vocation of the Christian priest, who will make the sacrifices ascend to the altar on high, who will exercise the priesthood together with Christ, who will remodel the creature, who will present the image, who will create for the world above, and most of all, who will become a god and make gods (θε#ν σµενον κα θεοποι!σοντα). (Or. 2. 73)

The Liturgy complements the spiritual life as a parallel mode of raising human life to the level of the divine. The priest is a mediator, deified and deifying, through sharing in Christ’s priesthood. The relationship between priest and philosopher is portrayed vividly in one of the early orations delivered in Constantinople. Gregory was duped by a charlatan called Maximus, whom he took to be a philosopher who had suffered for the Nicene cause. At the beginning of the oration he calls him up to the altar: ‘Come, stand close to the sacred things, to this mystical table, and to me who through these things lead you into the mystery of deification’ (καµο το δια` του´των µυσταγωγοντο τ4ν θωσιν), to which your words and life and purification through suffering have brought you’ (Or. 25. 2). In the presence of God and the angels and the entire body (πλ!ρωµα) of the Church Gregory will crown him like the president of some spiritual games, since Maximus has ‘defeated the falsehood of heresy for the honour of the living God who teaches us how to suffer with his own sufferings, the prize of which is the kingdom of heaven and to become a god through having risen above suffering’ (Or. 25. 2). The philosopher’s asceticism and witness to the faith are crowned by deification–– but through the ministry of the priest. Gregory had come to Constantinople in 379 at the invitation of the Nicene party.19 The year was a critical one both politically and ecclesiastically. The previous year Valens had led the Roman army to a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Goths at Adrianople, and had himself perished in the disaster. The new emperor Theodosius, unlike his Arian predecessor, was an upholder of Nicene orthodoxy. All through 379 he was occupied with the Gothic war. The Nicene party knew that the political ascendancy of the Arians was over, but they still needed to win over the educated administrative class of the capital. Hence the invitation to Gregory. A villa was placed at his disposal by a wealthy cousin, Theodosia, where he established a church, the Anastasia. It was there that he delivered most of his sermons, including the five Theological Orations, until in November 380 he was installed by Theodosius in the Church of the Holy Apostles as de facto bishop of Constantinople. 19 On Gregory’s links with Meletius of Antioch and the circumstances of his departure for Constantinople see McGuckin 2001: 235–8.

220

The Cappadocian Approach

The concept of deification, or theosis as we may now call it, provided Gregory with his best way of explaining the condescension of the divine in the Incarnation without compromising the homoousion of the Son. Theosis is the goal and fulfilment of human life. Adam was created as a synthesis of opposites, earthly and heavenly: ‘a living being placed here and transferred elsewhere, and, to complete the mystery, deified by its inclination towards God’ (ζον νταθα ο'κονοµου´µενον, κα αλλαχο µεθιστα´µενον, κα πρα το µυστηρου, τA πρ# τ#ν θε#ν νευ´σει θεου´µενον) (Or. 38. 11). This paradoxical duality is mirrored in Christ, the second Adam, who is ‘a union of two opposites’, flesh and spirit, ‘of which the latter actively deified, while the former was the recipient of deification’ (\ν τ# µ;ν θωσε τ# δ; θε(θη), with a rational soul mediating between the two (Or. 38. 13 = Or. 45. 9).20 In Christ that which assumed and that which was assumed are both God (θε# γα`ρ αµφτερα) (Or. 37. 2), but it is only the flesh that is deified. Countering the Arian argument from Luke 2: 52 that Christ advanced progressively to divine status, Gregory insists that the Son is Son and God from the beginning, for in Christ’s case there is no growth into divinity (ουδ; κ προκοπ > θωσι) (Or. 25. 16). Gregory could not entertain any christological approach which compromised the eternity of the Son. Otherwise the purpose of the Incarnation––the exaltation of man––would have been frustrated. The nature of the Son is without cause or beginning but afterwards he was born for a cause (and that was to save you who insult him, whose Godhead you despise on account of this, because he accepted your grosser nature) and came into contact with flesh by means of nous, and man here below became God,21 since he was mingled with God and became one, the higher nature having prevailed, that I might become a god in the same measure that he became a man. (Or. 29. 19)

The ‘double metathesis’ enables Gregory to say that the eternal Son filled the human nature which he assumed through the mediation of the nous with divine life, so that human nature in general might be deified in principle, thus enabling the individual believer to be deified in an analogous fashion by union of his or her nous with Christ.22 The intellectual nature of this union is sometimes emphasized. On one occasion Gregory suggests that the incomprehensible transcendence of God can act as a spur to wonder and desire and thence to a purification which makes us gods (Or. 38. 7). But the 20 Cf. Or. 39. 16, where it is the sôma of Christ that is deified, and Carm. i. 1. 10. 61 where Christ’s soul and nous are differentiated. 21 Mason punctuates: κα γενµενο α.νθρωπο, / κα´τω θε. I follow Gallay (SC 250): κα γενµενο α.νθρωπο / κα´τω, θε. Cf. Maximus, Amb. Th. 3, PG 91. 1040c. 22 Cf. Maximus’ comment on this passage, Amb. Th. 3, PG 91. 1040cd, discussed below (p. 283).

The Cappadocian Approach

221

incarnational context of deification is never lost sight of. Christ makes us gods ‘by the power of his Incarnation’ (Or. 30. 14). ‘What greater destiny can befall our humility than that humanity should be intermingled with God, and by this intermingling should become divine (θεν)?’ (Or. 30. 3). This new deified humanity is appropriated by us through baptism, which is another indication that the Son is simultaneously both wholly man and wholly God: ‘If I now worshipped a creature, or were baptized into a creature, I would not have been deified, nor would I have changed my first birth’ (Or. 40. 42). With the dual nature of the Son as a principle vital for our salvation, we must be on our guard against those who would divide the Son into two separate entities, as well as those who would fuse them into one. In the Letter to Cledonius (Ep. 101), written after his resignation and departure from Constantinople, Gregory focuses chiefly on Apollinarian claims, but he does not neglect opposite errors. Attacking the notion of two sons (the Son of God and the son of Mary), he insists that both the human and the divine form a single entity: ‘For both [natures] are one by mingling, God inhominated and man deified (τα` γα`ρ αµφτερα ν τA συγκρα´σει, θεο µ;ν νανθρωπ!σαντο, ανθρ(που δ; θεωθντο), or however one should express it’ (Ep. 101. 21). Against the Apollinarians it is the duality that must be emphasized. The humanity that the Logos assumed was complete in every respect, ‘for the unassumed is the unhealed’. By a neat use of Exodus 7: 1 Gregory suggests how the higher part of the human soul of Christ, the nous, was not crowded out by the Logos. Just as Moses was a god to Pharaoh but a servant of God, so our mind commands the body but does not share in God’s honour (Ep. 101. 45). The effects of the Incarnation, however, were more far-reaching than the deification of the ‘clay’ of human nature. The ‘image’, residing in the human mind, was also leavened and mingled with God, deified by his divinity (θεωθεσα δια` τ θετητο) (Ep. 101. 46). Our destiny is not simply a return to our original beatitude, but something greater: the image is not only restored, but in attaining the goal for which Adam had been created is deified. During Gregory’s time in Constantinople it was not the Apollinarians that preoccupied him but the Arians. These, like the orthodox, were divided into factions, one of which was the Macedonian (named after the former bishop of Constantinople, Macedonius, deposed in 360), which, while prepared to accept the homoousion of the Son, denied it of the Spirit. To have the homoousion of the Spirit formally accepted by the Church as orthodox became one of the aims of Gregory’s preaching campaign. If the Son cannot deify us unless he is consubstantial with the Father, the same principle applies to the Spirit: ‘If he is to be ranked with me, how can he make me a god, or how can he unite me with the Godhead?’ (Or. 31. 4; cf. 34. 12). The Spirit is both ‘God above me’ and ‘makes me a god here below’ (Carm. i. 1. 3. 4). He perfects, sanctifies, and deifies and therefore cannot

222

The Cappadocian Approach

himself be perfected, sanctified, and deified (Or. 41. 9). The fact that he deifies us through baptism proves that he is to be worshipped as God (Or. 31. 28). Indeed, the Holy Spirit is not limited by the rite itself in making us gods: he both anticipates baptism and is to be sought after it (Or. 31. 29). Gregory’s orations were not without effect. The council of bishops that met in Constantinople in May 381 confirmed that the Holy Spirit was to be worshipped with the Father and the Son, but did not explicitly endorse the homoousion of the Spirit. Disappointed at his failure to persuade the bishops to do so, and outmanoeuvred politically by his enemies, he resigned his see. In the course of his farewell address to the council he presents a carefully nuanced summary of his trinitarian doctrine. If one wishes to devise distinctive attributes for the Trinity, he favours ‘ungenerated’ (αγννητον), ‘generated’ (γννητον), and ‘proceeding’ (κπρευτον) (Or. 42. 17). These maintain the fundamental divide between God and the creature: ‘A creature may be said to be “of God”, and that too is a great thing for us. But it may never be called “God”. Otherwise I shall admit that a creature is God, if I too become a god in the proper sense of the term’ (:ταν καγ γνοµαι κυρω θε). For that is how things are. Either God or creature. In our case creature, for we are not gods’ (Or. 42. 17). In spite of our deification through the contemplative life or through baptism, in the last analysis we become gods only by analogy. From these texts it is clear that in his approach to deification Gregory follows the Athanasian pattern with an additional emphasis on the soul’s separation from the body and ascent to God in the Platonic manner. On the theological level the Son is represented in the Incarnation as both deifying and deified, God deifying the body, or ‘man’, which he assumed and through this ‘man’ deifying the human race as a whole. The Spirit, for his part, is not deified but only deifies. Together with the Son, the Spirit deifies human beings through baptism. The Eucharist is also said to lead them to deification. The Christian priest, as the dispenser of the sacraments, is thus an agent of deification. But he is also an agent of deification as a spiritual guide. For the first time in a Christian writer the monastic life is presented as the setting which enables human beings to attain divine status. Deification in this sense, the telos of every serious Christian, is conceived of in accordance with the ethical approach. Christian ascetics are those who are struggling to ascend to God through leaving the body and its needs behind. Theosis on its first appearance is linked with anabasis (ascent), and this connection is repeated on other occasions. Although the transformation of the human race by the Incarnation is mentioned as the basis of a deification in the realistic sense, it is the ethical approach of Philo and Clement which Gregory chooses to develop. The word theos applied to human beings has as many as five different senses, all of which are in some measure metaphorical, for the creature

The Cappadocian Approach

223

cannot become god literally (Or. 42. 17). The first sense is related to the Incarnation: ‘man’ becomes ‘god’ through intermingling with God; human nature is deified in the person of Christ through the incarnation of the Son (Or. 1. 5; 29. 19; 30. 3). The second is baptismal: the gods are the saved, those who have attained equality with the angels through having become sons of God and gods, yet still linger in the body (Or. 7. 22). The third is ethical: men become gods and akin to God even in this life by moral purification (Or. 30. 4). The fourth is eschatological: the soul that has escaped from the world becomes a god when it is reunited with its now spiritualized body (Or. 7. 21). And the fifth is purely analogous: magnanimity deifies because it imitates the divine philanthropia (Or. 17. 9; 36. 11). With regard to the human telos, the ‘gods’ for Gregory are thus on the one hand those who have begun through baptism to appropriate the deified humanity of the Son, and on the other those who have freed themselves from the material world through the ascetical struggle, both approaches leading to the angelic life in heaven. Gregory’s perspective, like that of Basil, is at once both eschatological and Platonic. (c) How is Deification Related to the Incarnation? Gregory draws some of his christological arguments from Athanasius, maintaining that Christ is both deifier and deified, the Logos deifying the human nature which he assumed, which explains, for example, how Christ can be said to ‘advance’ (Or. 30. 12; 25. 16; cf. Athanasius, CA 1. 39). But whereas Athanasius worked with a christological model in which the Word is the subject of the life of the flesh, Gregory separates the two natures quite emphatically. He does sometimes speak of the flesh or the body or the will being deified, but more often it is ‘man’ (Or. 29. 19; 30. 3; 38. 13; 39. 16). The unity between God and man is explained by the Stoic krasis theory, whereby two natural substances interpenetrate each other while still retaining their separate identities. The ‘man’ which the Logos assumed is deified by ‘intermingling’ with the Logos through the mediation of the nous, which is why Apollinarianism must be resisted. Not only must Christ have a human soul because ‘that which was not assumed was not healed’, but, as Origen had taught, the mediation of the higher part of the soul, the nous, is essential if the Logos is to be united to the flesh (cf. Origen, De Prin. 2. 6. 3). Gregory, it should be noted, avoids participation terms in his christological discussions. The union of the two natures takes place by συ´γκρασι and µξι rather than by µετουσα and µθεξι. Nestorius was later to favour a similar terminology, though in his case he also rejected deification. What prevents Gregory’s christology from tending towards Nestorianism is precisely the notion of deification. The God and the man in Christ are held in perfect union through the deification of the lower by the higher: the flesh, the will, the nous––the whole man––are wholly deified.

224

The Cappadocian Approach

As Winslow has shown, the deification of the human nature of Christ is ‘the principle upon which our analogous deification is based’.23 The purpose of the Incarnation was the exaltation of man. For just as Christ is a synthesis of opposites, so is man, flesh and spirit being for Gregory separate creations. Man’s nous has a certain kinship with God which his flesh lacks because it was his spiritual nature alone which was created in the image of God. By allowing the higher to prevail over the lower he is deified ‘by his inclination towards God’ (Or. 38. 11). As in his christology, Gregory tends to avoid the language of participation. Nowhere, for example, does he quote 2 Peter 1: 4. Nor is deification said to be equivalent to adoption. The believer is not so much incorporated into Christ as led to imitate him. The emphasis is thus inevitably on moral progress and the ascent of the soul, which is why Gregory stresses the metaphorical or analogous nature of man’s divine status. (d) Conclusion In his study of Gregory’s soteriology, Winslow presents ‘theosis’ as a fluid term descriptive of a dynamic relationship between God and man, which within the economy of salvation results ‘in our progressive growth towards an adopted dignity of fulfilled creatureliness’ (1979: 189). Rightly understanding theosis as fundamentally metaphorical, he suggests a sixfold dimension for it––as spatial (the ascent of the soul), visual (the illumination of the nous and the vision of God), epistemological (knowing God and being known by him), ethical (the ascetic endeavour), corporate (progressive union with God), and social (sharing in the divine life) (1979: 193 ff.). I believe that Winslow’s understanding of theosis is right. Not all the dimensions of the metaphor which he lists, however, are given equal prominence by Gregory himself. The realistic approach (which corresponds to Winslow’s corporate and social dimensions) has a secondary place in Gregory’s works, the emphasis being rather on the analogous and ethical approaches (which correspond to Winslow’s spatial, visual, epistemological, and ethical dimensions). On the realistic level, theosis is the change wrought in ‘man’ by the Incarnation, the fruits of which are communicated to the individual believer by the Holy Spirit in baptism. On the analogous level theosis takes place through the imitation of God’s philanthropia. On the ethical level it follows the escape of the soul from its bondage to matter and its ascent to God through ascetic endeavour and true philosophy. The result of deification is that we become gods. This begins as a human response to the Incarnation, our ascent being a mimesis of Christ’s descent. We have already become gods in principle in so far as we have been united with Christ by baptism, but our deification is only brought to fulfilment in 23

Winslow 1979: 189. But cf. Strange 1985, who suggests that it was the other way round.

The Cappadocian Approach

225

heaven after a long period of ascesis. Indeed, we can never become gods at all in the proper sense––that is to say, we can never overcome the generate/ ingenerate divide. In heaven the image will be restored, the nous deified, and the flesh immortalized, but the gulf between the created and the uncreated will never be transcended. Nevertheless, the saved will be called gods, for Psalm 82: 1 says that God will stand in the midst of gods (cf. Or. 7. 22; 30. 4). ‘Gregory’, says Winslow, ‘went far beyond his predecessors in his sustained application of theosis’ (1979: 179). This is an exaggeration. Athanasius had already laid down the lines which Gregory was to follow: the deification of the human nature by the Incarnation, and then the believer’s appropriation of this by accepting baptism and struggling to live the moral life. Gregory has much more to say on the moral life and makes much greater use of the Platonic tradition in saying it. But in the Life of Antony Athanasius had already adopted a similar approach. Where Gregory does go beyond Athanasius is in applying the terminology of deification to the ethical dimension. In this, as in his emphasis on the role of the nous, he reaches back to the tradition of Clement and Origen. On the other hand, he does not develop Athanasius’ doctrine of participation. This is an aspect of deification which was taken up by Gregory of Nyssa.

3. Gregory of Nyssa As a younger brother of Basil and a friend of Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa collaborated closely with them in their struggle against Arianism. Unlike them he had not studied at one of the great schools, but he had still acquired a profound philosophical and theological formation. He was made bishop of the small town of Nyssa in 372 (the same year that Gregory of Nazianzus became bishop of Sasima) as part of Basil’s campaign to maintain Caesarea’s influence as an ecclesiastical metropolis. Although deposed under Arian pressure, he was restored when Valens met his death in 378. In 379 he was present at the Council of Antioch, the Nicene party’s synod at which the idea of Gregory of Nazianzus going to Constantinople was probably first mooted. At the Constantinopolitan council of 381 he supported Gregory’s efforts to win acceptance for the homoousion of the Holy Spirit. Even if his success at the council was limited, he impressed the emperor. Theodosius afterwards issued a rescript designating communion with him a sign of orthodoxy (Cod. Theod. 16. 1. 3). Gregory’s spiritual teaching has been the subject of intensive study since the Second World War.24 Several writers have seen in Gregory a major 24 The two seminal works for this study were von Balthasar 1942 and Daniélou 1944. Among the more significant publications since are Leys 1951, Völker 1955, and Jaeger 1966.

226

The Cappadocian Approach

exponent of the doctrine of deification, but in fact he appeals to the doctrine very rarely.25 Deification for the bishop of Nyssa refers primarily to the transformation of the flesh assumed by the Son at the Incarnation (and, by extension, to the operation of the sacraments), and secondarily to man’s participation in the divine perfections. But ‘deification’ is not his favoured approach. He prefers in general to speak of ‘participation’ in the divine attributes and of the attainment of ‘likeness’ to God.26 (a) Vocabulary As Balás has observed, Gregory ‘uses the terminology of “deification” rather seldom’ (1966: 159). In fact he uses θεοποιω in a spiritual context only twice in two of his early works, and a neologism, συναποθεω, also twice in a work of his maturity, the Great Catechetical Oration.27 In this respect he presents a striking contrast with Gregory of Nazianzus. (b) Texts In his earlier works when Gregory mentions deification it is as a product of participation in the divine attributes. In the first, On Virginity (371), he presents virginity as a supreme attribute of God which deifies those who participate in it. Virginity signifies that which is pure and incorrupt.28 ‘What greater praise of virginity can there be,’ says Gregory, ‘than thus to be shown, so to speak, deifying those who share in her pure mysteries’ (θεοποιοσαν τρπον τινα` του` τν καθαρν αυτ µυστηρων µετεσχηκτα) so that they become partakers of the glory of the only truly holy and blameless God? (De Virg. 1, PG 46. 320d). Virginity is not a physical but a spiritual condition, a ‘disengagedness of heart’, as one writer has called it (NPNF 5. 342). It can therefore be acquired by the practice of philosophy. How a human being may ‘become a god’ through the imitation of the characteristics of the divine nature is pursued in the exegetical work On the 25 Gross describes Gregory’s mystical theology at some length without pinpointing those aspects to which Gregory applies the terminology of deification (1938: 219–38). Völker’s excellent study is the first to bring out the relationship between deification and participation in the divine perfections (1955: 274–82). Theodorou draws attention to the connection between the deification of Christ’s body in the Incarnation and our own deification by analogy (1956: 78–81, 138–9). This aspect is developed in a fine study by Moutsoulas (2000; originally published in Greek in 1965) which roots Gregory’s doctrine of deification firmly in his teaching on the Incarnation and the sacraments. The fullest treatment of how humanity shares in the attributes of the Godhead is still that of Balás’s classic study of the idea of participation in Gregory (1966). Most recently Daley’s penetrating analysis of divine transcendence and human immortality in Gregory (1997) has reaffirmed the christological context of his teaching on deification. 26 Besides the fundamental studies of Merki 1952 and Balás 1966 see Leys 1951. 27 Θεοποιω: De Virg. 1, PG 46. 320d; De Beat. 5, PG 44. 1249a. Συναποθεω: Or. Cat. 35, PG 45. 88a, Srawley 130. 4; Or. Cat. 37, PG 45. 97b, Srawley 152. 1. The second instance is from Srawley’s emended text. 28 De Virg. 1, PG 46. 321c; cf. Methodius of Olympus, Symposium 9. 4, where chastity is similarly presented as deifying.

The Cappadocian Approach

227

Lord’s Prayer. In order to approach God as Benefactor, one should become a benefactor oneself; in order to approach him as Good, one should become good, in order to approach him as Righteous, as Magnanimous and so on, one should acquire those attributes. And if a man is free from everything that comes under the idea of evil he becomes, so to speak, a god by his very way of life (θε# τρπον τινα` δια` τ τοιαυ´τη Lξεω γνεται), since he verifies in himself that which reason finds in the divine nature. Do you realize to what height the Lord raises his hearers through the words of the prayer by which he somehow transforms human nature into what is divine? For he lays down that those who approach God should themselves become gods (θεου` γινσθαι). (Or. Dom. 5, PG 44. 1177d; trans. Graef)

It is not clear which legislative text Gregory had in mind at this point. Perhaps he was thinking of Matthew 5: 48, ‘You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ His meaning, however, is clear. As in the treatise On Virginity, one is assimilated to God by participation in the divine attributes. Among the divine attributes beatitude is the property of God par excellence (θεο γα`ρ µακαριτη στιν) (De Beat. 5). Participation in the various beatitudes is therefore nothing other than communion with the Godhead (θετητο κοινωνα). In the fifth homily On the Beatitudes Gregory expresses the opinion that through each beatitude the Lord deifies as it were (θεοποιεν τρπον τινα`) the person who hears him if that person understands the word rightly (De Beat. 5, PG 44. 1249a). The merciful, for example, become blessed because they receive mercy from God. ‘If therefore the term “merciful” is suited to God, what else does the Word invite you to become but a god, since you ought to model yourself on the property of the Godhead?’ (ibid., 1249b; trans. Graef). It is also in the homilies On the Beatitudes that Gregory first alludes to the sacramental dimension of deification. In the seventh homily he stresses the immense gulf separating the divine nature from humanity. Nevertheless, man becomes akin to God and is received as a son by the Lord of the universe. How can one give thanks worthily for such a gift [i.e. of sonship]? With what words, what thoughts that move our mind can we praise this abundance of grace? Man transcends his own nature, he who was subject to corruption in his mortality becomes immune from it in his immortality, eternal from being fixed in time––in a word a god from a man (κβανει τ4ν )αυτο φυ´σιν / α.νθρωπο . . . θε# ξ ανθρ(που γινµενο). (De Beat. 7, PG 44. 1280c; trans. Graef)

Man transcends his nature by becoming a son of God. It is the sacramental gift bestowed by baptism, rather than any ascent of the soul through philosophy, which Gregory seems to have in mind in this passage. Man does not transcend his nature by his own ascetical effort.

228

The Cappadocian Approach

The spiritual meaning of baptism is expounded in the thirty-fifth chapter of the Great Catechetical Oration (c.385). Our salvation comes not simply from hearing the teaching of Christ but from what he achieved. Christ established a communion with man, becoming incarnate, ‘in order that, through the flesh which he assumed and at the same time deified (δια` τ αναληφθεση παρ  αυτο κα συναποθεωθεση σαρκ) all that is akin to it and of the same nature with it might therewith be saved . . .’ (Or. Cat. 35, PG 45, 88a, Srawley 130. 4). But this did not take place automatically without some action on the part of the individual believer. Baptism was devised so that the acts accomplished by Christ might be imitated, and thus appropriated, by the Christian. When he turns to the Eucharist in the thirty-seventh chapter of the Great Catechetical Oration, Gregory extends the deification of Christ’s body in the Incarnation to the rest of humanity in a similar fashion through the operation of this second sacrament. The union of divine and human in Christ endowed his flesh with true life. Since, then, that flesh which was the receptacle of deity received this part also in order to maintain itself in being, and the God who manifested himself mingled himself with our mortal nature in order that by communion with his Godhead humanity might at the same time be deified (9να τA τ θετητο κοινων" συναποθε(θη τ# ανθρ(πινον), he plants himself, in accordance with his plan of grace, in all believers by means of that flesh, which derives its subsistence from both wine and bread, mingling himself with the bodies of believers in order that, by union with that which is immortal, man also might participate in incorruption. (Or. Cat. 37, PG 45. 97b, Srawley, 152. 1; trans. Srawley)

The humanity that was deified was the flesh of Christ. But that flesh is the same flesh that believers receive in communion. The Eucharist thus enables them to participate in the deifying effect of the Incarnation. In striking contrast to Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory does not use the operation of the sacraments as an argument for the homoousion of the Son. In fact the only occasion on which he uses any of the verbs ‘to deify’ in his anti-Arian works is when he faults the Eunomians on their logic. They place the Son on our side of the genetic/agenetic divide. Therefore if they call the Lord ‘God’ (as they do), they will also deify the rest of creation (κα τ4ν λοιπ4ν κτσιν θεοποι!σουσιν) (C. Eunom. 4, PG 45 629d). But creation does not partake of divinity. Gregory is never able to say that human beings become gods except in a qualified sense. In The Life of Moses, a work of his old age, Gregory discusses the transformation of Moses’ right hand and the rod’s changing into a snake (Exod. 4: 1–7) as figures of the Incarnation: He who has some insight into these things right away becomes a god to those who resist the truth (θε# α.ντικρυ γνεται τν ανθεστηκτων µ;ν τA αληθε") who

The Cappadocian Approach

229

have been distracted to a material and unsubstantial delusion. (V. Mos. 2. 35, PG 44 336c; trans. Malherbe and Ferguson) The person who has insight (perinoia) becomes a god in an analogous fashion, just as Moses was a god to Pharaoh (Exod. 7: 1).29 Philo makes a similar point when he says that Moses was god to Pharaoh as a wise man is a god to a fool (Det. 162; cf. 3. 2 above). Three points emerge from this rapid survey of Gregory’s deification terms. First, deification for the bishop of Nyssa is primarily a christological term, expressing the transformation of the human nature of Christ by the divine, and it is only in this sense that it is used literally. Secondly, deification is extended to human beings through the sacraments, which bring about a participation in the deified body of Christ. Thirdly, the deification of human beings by participation in the divine attributes is deification in a strictly analogous sense. In all of Gregory’s extensive spiritual writings he refers to such participation as θεοποιοσα only twice, and in both cases he qualifies it with τρπον τινα´, ‘so to speak’. (c) The Christological Basis of Deification Gregory’s christology, like that of Athanasius, is soteriologically driven.30 Founded on the Irenaean-Athanasian exchange principle, it holds that the Word became incarnate ‘so that by becoming as we are, he might make us as he is’ (9να κ το γενσθαι οGο >µε >µα˜ ποι!σN οGο κενο) (Antirrh. 11, GNO iii. 1. 146). The way in which this is brought about is expressed in a terminology very personal to Gregory. ‘Mixture’ language predominates. The Word was ‘mingled with humanity’ (κατεµχθη τA ανθρωπτητι) (Or. Cat. 26, Srawley 101. 2–3). He ‘infused himself into our nature’ (πρ# τ4ν φυ´σιν >µν ανακιρναµνον) (Or. Cat. 27, Srawley 101. 10–11) in order that he should receive from us our human characteristics ('δι(µατα) of finiteness and mortality, while we received from him his divine characteristics of eternity and incorruptibility. This mingling and communication of idioms does not imply a symmetrical interpenetration of two equal constituents. The divine swallows up the human, in Gregory’s famous image, like a drop of vinegar absorbed by a boundless ocean (Antirrh. 42, GNO iii. 1. 201; Ad Theoph. adv. Apoll., GNO iii. 1. 126; C. Eunom. 3. 4, GNO ii. 150). Nor does it imply the annihilation of the human. The drop of vinegar in the ocean may no longer be perceptible, but nevertheless it still exists. The humanity taken up into the divinity may be transformed and endowed with incorruptibility but it is still human. Some have found this christology unsatisfactory because 29 On perinoia as a term for a knowledge that ‘is superior to that derived from the observation of material things’, yet ‘is not quite the same as the knowledge that comes from contemplation of God’, see Malherbe and Ferguson, Life of Moses 163 n. 51. 30 In what follows I depend heavily on Daley 1997.

230

The Cappadocian Approach

it does not seem to do justice to the kenotic aspect of the Incarnation (e.g. Grillmeier 1975: 376). Others are impressed by Gregory’s powerful vision of the saving reality of a God who, making humanity his own, transforms and exalts it (e.g. Daley 1997: 95). The language of deification would have sat easily with such a christology but Gregory uses it very sparingly. The reason is probably connected with his struggle against Apollinarianism. Apollinarius’ teaching on Christ as embodied deity and deified body (θε# σεσωµατωµνο κα σµα τεθεωµνον), the Word taking the place of a human nous as Christ’s directing principle, was totally unacceptable to Gregory because it depreciated both the divinity and the humanity of Christ. On the one hand, omnipotent divinity was reduced to being the directing principle merely of a circumscribed body. On the other, humanity was deprived of its highest principle, with the result that what was saved was no different in essence from a horse or an ox. Any language which suggested Apollinarius’ σµα τεθεωµνον would therefore have been problematical to Gregory. The transformation of human nature effected in Christ marks the beginning of a new glorified humanity in which each one of us can participate. Such participation is ‘not through some connection conceived of in purely physical terms, or through sharing in some Platonic universal, but through human involvement with Christ in salvation history, especially through faith, baptism and a disciple’s imitation’.31 (d) The Sacramental Life Faith and baptism are the necessary means of our laying hold of the new humanity brought about in the risen and transfigured Christ because we are not disembodied spirits but twofold creatures ‘compounded of soul and body’ (Or. Cat. 37, Srawley 141. 1–2). Baptism inserts us into the saving action of Christ by our imitating in the threefold immersion the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. It is described by Gregory as a recovery of ‘the tunic of incorruption’, a realization in the individual of the effects of Christ’s defeat of death and corruption (Bapt. diff., PG 46 420c). The Eucharist is expounded on similar lines. Since the sacramental elements are identical with the glorified flesh of Christ, they are the source of life for us, the remedy which makes our bodies immortal. Through the Eucharist our bodies participate in incorruption by mingling with Christ’s body, for only in this way can the grace of immortality, which belongs properly to Christ alone, be transmitted to others (Or. Cat. 37, PG 45 97, Srawley 151–2). 31 Daley 1997: 94. Daley draws attention to Hübner 1974, esp. 1–25 and 95–198 ‘for a careful discussion and refutation of the overly literal interpretation of Gregory’s idea of human solidarity and “physical” redemption found in many histories of dogma’ (1997: 94 n. 38). See also Moutsoulas 2000, esp. 99–128.

The Cappadocian Approach

231

(e) The Ascent of the Soul to God As Daniélou has pointed out, Gregory’s spiritual doctrine is an extension of his sacramental theology (Musurillo 1961: 22). The soul’s faculties, ‘raised to the supernatural level by the sacraments’, flower in the pursuit of the spiritual life. The flowering of these vivified faculties has a threefold aspect. The soul’s purification from the passions and the multiplicity of earthly things raises it to the contemplation of God as true life, true beauty, and true goodness. But contemplation, or theoria, is not the goal of the soul’s ascent. The soul will pass beyond contemplation into the immediate presence of God through divine love.32 In his mature works, the Homilies on the Song of Songs and the Life of Moses, Gregory characterizes these three aspects under the images of light, cloud, and darkness.33 The way of light is the purificatory stage. The soul turns away from the deception of the sense to the reality which is God, and bathed in this divine light acquires the gifts of apatheia and parresia. The way of cloud, which corresponds to the Platonic theoria, the contemplation of intelligible reality, is the next stage. Beyond the way of cloud lies the way of darkness. The soul has now been cleansed of its corrosive deposits and has become a mirror reflecting the divine perfection. As Louth puts it, ‘the mirror of the soul enables the soul to contemplate by possessing in itself in a created mode what God is in an uncreated mode’ (1981: 92). The soul comes to be ‘informed by the characteristics of the divine nature’ (Anim. et res. 105a, trans. Callahan). It clings to the Good and mingles itself with it, having in this way the Trinity dwelling within. Yet God is not possessed. The way of darkness is a way expressing the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God yet at the same time his closeness to the soul. This utter inexhaustibility of God implies a perpetual advance of the soul as it is drawn ever more deeply into the experience of his presence. Gregory’s account of Christ’s prokopê, it should be noted, is a spiritualized one: Christ ever advances in our hearts. The doctrine of epektasis represents perfection as a process of constant advance as the soul reaches out to the infinite. Gregory applies the terminology of deification to the operation of the sacraments and to an aspect of the way of darkness, the ‘informing’ of the soul with the characteristics of the divine nature. He prefers, however, to discuss the latter in his mature works in terms of participation rather than deification. God is absolute virtue (> παντελ4 αρετ!). Therefore ‘whoever pursues true virtue participates in nothing other than God’ (ουδ;ν Dτερον Z Θεο µετχει) (V. Mos. 1. 7, PG 44. 301a). This is not to say that he possesses 32 Cf. Daniélou 1944: 274: ‘La vie mystique est faite, inséparablement . . . d’un double élément d’intériorité et de transcendance, d’entrée et de sortie, d’instase et d’extase.’ 33 The best introduction to Gregory’s doctrine of spiritual ascent is Louth 1981: 80–97. For fuller treatments see von Balthasar 1942, Daniélou 1944, Leys 1951, and Völker 1955.

232

The Cappadocian Approach

God for ‘since this good has no limit, the participant’s desire itself has no stopping place but stretches out with the limitless’ (ibid., trans. Malherbe and Ferguson).34 Nor does the pursuer of virtue participate in the nature of God. It is the attributes or operations of God in which he participates. Gregory never quotes 2 Peter 1: 4. The most he will say is that the Christian imitates the nature of God: ‘if man was originally a likeness of God, perhaps we have not gone beyond the limit in declaring that Christianity is an imitation of the divine nature’ (Prof. Chr., PG 46. 244d; trans. Callahan). This imitation restores the divine likeness in man, but does not allow him to become what God is. The concept of participation enables Gregory to uphold the unapproachable transcendence of God at the same time as man’s closeness to him. That is why in his mature works he prefers to speak of ‘participation’ rather than ‘deification’. He seems increasingly to have avoided anything that might tend to compromise God’s uncreated transcendence. (e) Conclusion The youngest of the three Cappadocians therefore finds the concept of deification in the end inadequate for the paradoxical ‘union’ of man with God which he wishes to express.35 Gregory of Nazianzus was able to use the concept of theosis as a frequent metaphor for man’s growth towards fulfilment in God. Gregory of Nyssa appears to have been wary of the slightest tendency to compromise the utter transcendence and unknowability of God by the use of the terminology of deification. For him the terminology of participation provides an alternative means of expressing our ever deepening relationship with God through union with his energies, while his nature or essence remains totally beyond our comprehension. 4. The Cappadocian Achievement The Cappadocians take the doctrine of deification from the Alexandrians and adapt it to a Platonizing understanding of Christianity as the attainment of likeness to God as far as is possible for human nature. They do not make much use of the terminology of the Alexandrians: θεοποιω is used only twice by Basil, once by Gregory of Nazianzus, and twice by Gregory of Nyssa––Gregory of Nazianzus, the only Cappadocian to speak at all frequently of deification, much preferring to use θεω and his own coinage, On Gregory’s idea of epektasis see Daniélou 1944: 309–26. ‘Union’ is in inverted commas because henôsis is a term which Gregory uses only for the union of Christ with the Church (Hom. 4 in Cant., PG 44. 836d) or the ‘union with the immortal’ attained by the believer in the Eucharist (Or. Cat. 37, PG 45. 97b, Srawley 152.5). As the goal of mystical ascent it is a characteristically Dionysian term. Cf. Meredith 1999: 101: ‘The idea of union is peculiar to Denis, though foreign to Gregory.’ 34 35

The Cappadocian Approach

233

θωσι. Nor do they base themselves on the realistic approach to deification. Only the body of Christ, the ensouled flesh which the Logos assumed, is deified in any literal sense, and even that becomes problematical in the struggle with Apollinarianism. Human beings are deified in a merely ethical or metaphorical sense, the emphasis being as much on the ascent of the soul to God as on the transformation of the believer through baptism. The realistic approach to deification is important to the two Gregories as a way of holding together the human and the divine elements in their logos-man type of christology. It is this christology which makes it difficult for them to apply the realistic approach to human beings, for the latter would then be insufficiently distinguished from the Son. Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus stress the attaining of the divine likeness by imitation: for them Christianity is the imitation of the incarnate life of Christ. Christ deified the body which he assumed, the purpose of the Incarnation being to enable us to return to the likeness we have lost. But the imitation of God is not simply external. It consists in overcoming the passions and freeing the soul from the constraints of corporeal life, and also in putting on Christ in baptism. We imitate God through the practice of virtue; we also imitate him by clothing ourselves in Christ. Both baptism and the moral life are said to deify. In Gregory of Nyssa’s case the concept of participation becomes important. Indeed, the language of participation tends to replace that of deification, man attaining his telos by participation in the divine attributes. All three Cappadocians mention the role of the Eucharist in deification, but only Gregory of Nyssa develops it. In his realistic view of the Eucharist he anticipates Cyril of Alexandria, although he supports it with a different christology. The Godhead deifies the flesh at the Incarnation by commingling with it; this flesh in turn deifies believers by commingling with them when they receive it in eucharistic communion. The Cappadocian concept of deification is conditioned by their Platonism and their apophatic approach to the Godhead. They took for granted that the attainment of likeness to God was the telos of human life. But God remains in his essence utterly beyond human grasp. The deification of the Christian is subordinated to this by being kept to the ethical and analogous levels. For Basil, theos is simply a title which God bestows on the worthy. It expresses man’s eschatological fulfilment when the whole man, body and soul, will be spiritualized and rendered incorrupt that it may enjoy the vision of God. For Gregory of Nazianzus theosis is man’s telos brought about on the one hand by the deifying power of the Holy Spirit in baptism, and on the other by the moral struggle in the ascetic life. But we can never become ‘gods’ in the proper sense, that is to say, we can never bridge the gap between the created and uncreated orders of reality. For Gregory of Nyssa a man

234

The Cappadocian Approach

becomes a god by imitating the characteristics of the divine nature, by participating in the divine attributes, by modelling himself on the properties of the Godhead. Ultimately he transcends his own nature and becomes immune from corruption and mortality, but Gregory of Nyssa is unwilling to call this ‘deification’. Deification for him is fundamentally a christological concept, which by extension may also be applied to the Eucharist.

8 The Monastic Synthesis The Achievement of Maximus the Confessor

By the early fifth century ecclesiastical writers, with rare exceptions, had ceased to speak of the deification either of the Christian or of the humanity of Christ. The movement away from the language of deification towards that of participation, which is observable in Gregory of Nyssa, is confirmed by Cyril of Alexandria. In these writers and their immediate successors deification is no longer perceived to be a helpful metaphor. This is probably because of the controversies about the legacies of Origen and Apollinarius that preoccupied many ecclesiastics in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus had attempted to salvage whatever in Origen was compatible with Nicene orthodoxy. Their protégé Evagrius, however, developed the speculative side of Origen far beyond the master, elaborating a theory of the spiritual life as a process which culminated in the return of created intelligences to the divine source of their being. Later the more extreme adherents of Evagrius’ version of Origenism were known as ‘Isochrists’ for believing that at the final apocatastasis the souls of the saved, having become pure intellects, would be equal to Christ himself (Cyril Scyth., V. Sab. 197). The Origenism of Evagrius and his fellow Nitrian monks was attacked bitterly by Cyril of Alexandria’s uncle, Theophilus, who mounted a campaign against them in collaboration with Jerome and Epiphanius of Cyprus. Theophilus was also drawn by Gregory of Nyssa into the controversy over Apollinarianism (Ad Theophil. adv. Apollinaristas, GNO iii. 1. 119– 28). Evagrius had not spoken of deification by name. But for Apollinarius the deification of the flesh by the Word summarized his profoundly held conviction that the highest part of the soul in Christ had been replaced by the Word as its governing principle. His teaching was condemned by councils held in Rome (377), Antioch (379), and Constantinople (381) (cf. Raven 1923: 144–8). By Cyril’s time it could well have been thought that the term θεοποησι, even though sanctioned by the great Athanasius himself, no longer carried the right connotations.

236

The Monastic Synthesis

Cyril’s abandoning of the language of deification is all the more remarkable for the fact that he did so in spite of its impeccably Alexandrian provenance. Non-Alexandrians, with one possible exception, make no use of the technical terms except under the influence of Clement, Origen, or Athanasius.1 Besides those treated in detail in the present study, mention may be made of Gregory Thaumaturgus, Methodius of Olympus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Macarius Magnes. Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. c.270), who had been a pupil of Origen, referred to his master’s teaching as a ‘method for the attaining of a kind of apotheosis’ (Pan. 11, PG 10. 1084c, Koetschau 27). Methodius of Olympus in Lycia (d. 311), commenting on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles in an allegorical style very like Origen’s, takes green branches of the booths to be the boughs of chastity, ‘that deifying and blessed tree’ (τ- θεοποι- κα µακαρB φυτ-) (Symp. 9. 4, PG 18. 188a; GCS 27. 119). Chastity, bringing immortality to our souls, enables the pure to be made gods by God and contemplate him face to face, for only like can know like (Symp. 9. 3). Later Methodius was to turn against Origen, but there is no sign of this in the Symposium (cf. Patterson 1997b: 130). Eusebius of Caesarea (d. c.340) was a warm admirer of Origen (cf. HE 6). Under Origen’s influence he declares that the Christ is the image of the invisible God deified by his Father (Dem. Evang. 5. 4, PG 22. 372bc, Heikel 225. 10. 13. 24). Although he does not mention the deification of the Christian, he comes near to it when he speaks of ‘participation in the radiant splendour of the Godhead’ (De eccles. theol. 3. 18, PG 24. 1041bc; GCS 4. 179. 34–6). Cyril of Jerusalem (d. c. 386) reveals a similar tendency. He describes the Holy Spirit as deifying in the manner of Athanasius (^ν τ# πνεµα τ# α_γιον, τ# πα´ντων α8γιαστικ#ν κα θεοποιν) (Catech. 4. 16, PG 33. 476a). But when he refers to the ‘gods’ of Psalm 82: 6, it is only to note that this is simply a titular appellation (Catech. Procatech. 6; cf. Catech. 11. 4). Macarius Magnes (fl. 400) is different. His intention was to answer Neoplatonist attacks on Christianity. Like other Platonizing writers, he speaks of the deification of the human intellect (Apocrit. 3. 23; 4. 26, Blondel 105. 28; 212. 21). After the Resurrection Christ exalted human nature, making what was mortal immortal, what was earthly unearthly, what was enslaved free, what was compounded uncompounded, in short, making man a god (Apocrit. 3. 14, Blondel 90. 10–13). This ‘man’ (α.νθρωπο) was Christ’s human nature. As far as the exaltation of the individual believer is concerned, Macarius says that he who honours his Maker deifies himself by participating in the Godhead ()αυτ#ν δ’ αποθεο κοινωνν τA θετητι) like someone basking in the sun or warming 1 The exception is Hippolytus. Although nothing is known of his early life, it would have been strange if he had not had contact with Alexandria. Certainly his name was well known there. When Origen came to Rome in about 212, he made a point of going to hear him preach (Eusebius, HE 6. 14. 10). All other writers who use the language of deification can be shown to depend at least in this respect on the Alexandrian tradition.

The Monastic Synthesis

237

himself by a fire (Apocrit. 4. 16, Blondel 186. 3–11). This participation in God in the Platonic manner is reminiscent of Origen (although the dynamic aspect characteristic of Origen is lacking), as is also Macarius’ statement that the Logos makes rational beings gods in virtue of his being God, and christs in virtue of his being Christ (/ Θε# Λγο του` λογικου` θεου` ργαζµενο, π δε χριστου` Lσχατη µακαριτη). (Praktikos, Prol. 8, SC 171. 492)

The first stage is praktikê, the struggle against the passions, which has love as its goal, the second gnôsis, which aims at the attainment of theology (Praktikos 84). The first stage is dominated by the combat against the demons, the false gods of the Old Testament, each of whom is a specialist in some vice or other. On the opposite side are the angels, who assist us by inspiring us with good thoughts (Praktikos 80) and by suggesting the spiritual pleasures that are the source of our felicity (Praktikos 24). They rejoice when evil diminishes, acting as ministers to us of mercy and love (Praktikos 76). Senior monks perform a similar role: ‘Our elders should be honoured as angels; it is they who anoint us for combat’ (Praktikos 100). The second stage, parallel to the first rather than consecutive to it, takes place against the background of this spiritual warfare. The struggle against the passions prepares the monk for contemplation (θεωρα) (Praktikos 36), but so long as he is still in the world the struggle must not be abandoned. Gnôsis begins as the contemplation of the essential natures of created things and rises through insight into incorporeal natures to the contemplation of God himself. Gradually the higher part of the soul is stripped of all images as it ascends to its ultimate goal. ‘Knowledge of incorporeals’, says Evagrius, ‘raises the mind and presents it before the Holy Trinity’ (Ad monachos 136; trans. Driscoll). The vision of God is the final beatitude (cf. Gnostikos 13). But the divine is not susceptible of definition (Gnostikos 27). The vision is a purely intellectual joy beyond any expression in words (Gnostikos 41) or images (Ps.Basil, Ep. 8. 7). Any attempt to attain a sensory experience even of the angels or of Christ will only lead to demonic delusion (Ps.-Nilus, De Orat. 115, PG 79. 1192d–1193a). Moreover, the ultimate felicity is available only as an eschatological reality (Ps.-Basil, Ep. 8. 7). True prayer may assimilate the monk to the angelic life––'σα´γγελο γνεται µοναχ# δια` τ αληθο προσευχ (Ps.-Nilus, De Orat. 113, PG 79. 1192d)––but ‘the knowledge beyond which no other knowledge exists’ transcends even the attenuated materiality of the angels and is attainable only on the ‘last day’, when the intellect sheds its covering of clay and makes the final transition from material knowledge to immaterial contemplation. ‘For only then is our mind arisen, and awakened to sublime felicity, when it shall contemplate the “Oneness” and the “Aloneness” of the Word’ (/πηνκα αRν θεωρ!ση τ4ν )να´δα κα µονα´δα το Λγου) (Ps.-Basil, Ep. 8. 7; trans. Deferrari), which is the Father.

240

The Monastic Synthesis

Although Evagrius never mentions Origen, the influence of Origen’s more speculative writings is profound. This influence may have come to him through his patron Gregory of Nazianzus, whose decisive role in his intellectual development he acknowledges (Praktikos, Epil.; Gnostikos 44; cf. Socrates, HE 6. 30) and also through his older contemporary Didymus the Blind, whom he calls ‘the great Gnostic teacher’ (Gnostikos 48). In the latter part of his life he was, with one of the Tall Brothers, Ammonius, who was famous for having committed to memory many thousands of lines of Origen, Pierius, and Didymus (Palladius, HL 11. 4), the leader of an Origenist group at Kellia (Palladius, HL 24. 2). The radical Origenism promoted by this group provoked Theophilus’ anti-Origenist campaign, which resulted in the condemnation of Origenism by an Alexandrian synod in 400. By then Evagrius was dead but his more speculative ideas continued to be influential in monastic circles through the dissemination of his Kephalaia gnostika. The Origenist controversy resurfaced again in the sixth century in a struggle between rival monastic groups that culminated in the condemnation of Origenism at the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553. In 543 the Emperor Justinian had already issued an Edict against Origen which had condemned nine propositions drawn from the De Principiis. The anathemas of 553 were directed more against the radical Origenism developed by Evagrius in his Kephalaia gnostika. What disturbed the fathers most were Evagrius’ speculations concerning the pre-existence, fall, and restoration of souls together with the christology that this scheme entailed. According to the fifteen anathemas the Origenists held that all intelligent beings––Christ, the angels, human beings, and demons––formed a spiritual continuum which preexisted the Fall and would one day be restored to its first state. These created intelligences (noes) lost their original unity when divine love grew cool in them. Those whose ardour diminished the least, namely, the angels, have the most subtle bodies. Those who grew cooler than the angels became human souls enclosed in material bodies.4 Those who grew coldest of all became the demons. Only a single nous remained steadfast in the contemplation of God and that unfallen nous became Christ. The divine Word did not take a human body endowed with a rational soul. On the contrary, this unfallen nous (Nous as opposed to the noes) united himself to the Word and became Christ through the knowledge of the Monad conferred on him by the union. At the end of time matter will cease to exist. Only the noes will be left, now rendered purely spiritual and thus able to return to their original undifferentiated unity. By implication all human beings would become the same as Christ, contemplating the Monad as Nous without any intermediary.5 Cf. Origen, who connects ψυχ! with ψυ´χεσθαι, to grow cold (De Prin. 2. 8. 3). Origen’s etymology is derived from Aristotle, De Anima 1. 2. 405b. 5 See also Evagrius’ Letter to Melania, where he presents the noes as flowing back to God like rivers to the sea (Ep. Melan. 6). 4

The Monastic Synthesis

241

This gnosticizing approach to deification, which sees the goal of the spiritual life as total assimilation to Christ through the shedding of the material element that accounts for individuation, was decisively rejected by the fathers of the Fifth Ecumenical Council. 2. The Macarian Writings A very different outlook informs the Macarian writings, an outlook based not on Platonic intellectualism but on a Spirit-centred immanentism. These texts, which survive in three collections comprising homilies, erotapocriseis (Questions and Answers), and a short ascetical treatise (the Epistula Magna), are by an unknown author writing probably in the 380s, perhaps in Mesopotamia or the eastern part of Asia Minor.6 In the Greek tradition they have always circulated under the name of Macarius.7 This was not a deliberate pseudonym but probably reflects the use of makarios as an ecclesiastical title, which was then taken to be a personal name and identified with Macarius of Egypt. The environment in which the writings were produced, however, was that of Syrian monasticism. The language is full of the rich poetic imagery characteristic of Syriac literature, and also exhibits many of the traits of the Syrian encratite tradition. In view of this background, the relationship of the texts to Messalianism has been much debated. The consensus today is that Messalianism was not a self-conscious heresy but represents one extreme at the end of the broad spectrum of Syrian monasticism. The Macarian texts perhaps deliberately offer a corrective to the Messalian position, mitigating its dualist tendencies and its disdain of the sacraments (Stewart 1991: 9–11). The Messalians, so far as we can tell (they left no texts of their own), believed that the soul at birth was occupied by a demon. Baptism alone did not suffice to dislodge it. The only sure remedy was continuous prayer.8 Everything which hindered such prayer was rejected. This meant that in their understanding of the monastic life manual labour was excluded. The emphasis fell entirely on attaining a personal experience of the Holy Spirit, an experience which manifested itself in ecstatic forms of devotion. For it was only the experience of the Spirit that guaranteed salvation.9 Macarius also emphasizes the experiential side of the spiritual life and the role of the Holy Spirit, but without the hostility to normal ecclesial structures that seems to have marked out the Messalians. He presents the spiritual On the three collections see Stewart 1991: 70–4. In the Arabic tradition they are assigned to Symeon of Mesopotamia. 8 Hence the name ‘Messalians’ from a Syriac word meaning ‘the praying ones’, which Greek writers also Hellenized as ‘Euchites’. 9 For the sources that enable us to reconstruct Messalian belief see Stewart 1991: 52–69. 6 7

242

The Monastic Synthesis

life as a process which may be thought of as consisting of three stages. In the first, although we have turned to God, the heart is still dominated by sin. In the second the heart becomes a battleground between the divine power on the one hand and sin on the other. In the third stage sin is driven out by the co-operation of the human will with the power of the Holy Spirit. This final stage, in which the perfect Christian is raised to a state higher than that enjoyed originally by Adam, is described by Macarius on occasion as ‘deification’. (a) Vocabulary The Homilies apply θεοποιω once (Coll. I, Hom. 2. 12. 6) to the deified body of Christ by which believers are saved, and αποθεω twice (Coll. II, Homs. 15. 35. 496 and 26. 2. 19) to the effect on the believer of participation in the Holy Spirit. Believers are also sometimes called ‘gods’ (Coll. II, Homs. 17. 1. 8; 27. 3. 47; 34. 2. 29) in the context of the final fulfilment of the eschatological life, in which the Father is revealed as Lord of lords, King of kings, and God of gods. A notable feature of the Homilies is their frequent use of metaphors of both mingling and participation, although without sensitivity to their different philosophical backgrounds.10 Citations of 2 Peter 1: 4 (‘partakers of the divine nature’) appear, uniquely in patristic literature, alongside discussions using the vocabulary of mixing and mingling.11 With regard to the relationship between the human and the divine in the spiritual life, Macarius seems to have been equally happy with metaphors both of interpenetration and of transformation. (b) Deification Texts For Macarius the deification of the human person signifies his or her eschatological fulfilment through the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit restores us not merely to what was lost by the Fall but to a state superior to that of Adam. An erotapocrisis sums this up as follows: Question: Is it not so that when the Holy Spirit comes, the natural desire is uprooted along with the sin? Answer: I have already said that not only is the sin uprooted but humankind also receives again the first creation of the pure Adam. By the power of the Spirit and the spiritual regeneration, humankind in this way comes to the measure of the first Adam and becomes greater than him. For humankind is deified (αποθεοται). (Coll. II, Hom. 26. 2)

On the language of mingling and participation in the homilies see Stewart 1991: 170–88, 285–7. 2 Peter 1: 4 is quoted in Collection I (Berthold) in Hom. 40. 1. 99 and Hom. 44. 5. 6; in Collection II (Dörries, Klostermann, and Kroeger) in Hom. 25. 5; 39. 1; 44. 9 (bis); and 49. 3; and in Collection III (Klostermann and Berthold) in Hom. 8. 2 and 16. 6. 10 11

The Monastic Synthesis

243

The process by which this takes place is through the struggle to overcome the sin that is lodged in the soul. For from the time of Adam the soul has become the dwelling place of the serpent. It is only when one renounces one’s own will that the soul is brought under control: Such a person is counted worthy to arrive at the good measure of the Spirit and receives through the divine power a pure humanity (τ#ν καθαρ#ν α.νθρωπον) and becomes greater than himself. For such a person is deified (αποθεοται) and becomes a son of God, receiving the heavenly imprint in his soul. For God’s elect are anointed with sanctifying oil and become officeholders and kings. (Coll. II, Hom. 15. 35)

Their being anointed with oil makes them christs (Coll. II, Hom. 17. 1; 34. 2; 43. 1). And their becoming christs means that they have been regenerated by the Spirit and re-formed into a new humanity, for ‘all are transformed into a divine nature (ε' θεϊκ4ν γα`ρ φυ´σιν α_παντε µεταβα´λλονται), having become christs and gods and children of God’ (Coll. II, Hom. 34. 2). ‘All in joy, in gladness and in peace are kings and lords and gods. For it is written: “King of kings and Lord of lords” ’ (Coll. II, Hom. 27. 3).12 The perfect sovereignty of God over the redeemed implies that they attain, as it were, a community of being with him. Macarius expresses this on several occasions through participation language. When the soul receives the sanctification of the Spirit through faith and prayer, it becomes ‘a partaker of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1: 4) (Coll. II, Hom. 44. 9). The gift of participation given by God is ‘from the hypostasis of his Godhead’ (κ τ *ποστα´σεω τ θετητο αυτο) (Coll. II, Hom. 39). It is given when we have attained the likeness of the Lord, when we have been wounded by divine love (Coll. II, Hom. 25. 5). For then our souls are changed and re-created (Coll. II, Hom. 44. 9; 49. 3), having communed with the Holy Spirit and been commingled with him (Coll. II, Hom. 32. 6). (c) The Perfect Christian For Macarius participation, blending, and mingling are images expressing intimacy with the divine without any implications, on the philosophical level, about the ontological status of the believer. Who is the perfect Christian? It is the person who, in Pauline terms, has put on the perfect man, the τλειο α.νθρωπο, namely Jesus Christ (Coll. II, Hom. 2. 4; cf. Rom. 13: 14; Eph. 4: 13, 24). This enables the believer to recover the heavenly image which was lost in Adam. But such perfection is provisional. The struggle against evil must continue right up to death. Some think they are perfect because of their celibacy and detachment from material things (Coll. II, Hom. 17. 13). They are mistaken. These 12 The quotation is from 1 Timothy 6: 15, but the ‘kings and lords and gods’ implies an allusion to 1 Enoch 9: 4.

244

The Monastic Synthesis

achievements are merely external matters. There is still evil in the heart which even the greatest ascetic must guard against (ibid.; cf. Coll. II, Hom. 8. 5; 15. 16). A saint, says Macarius, is a person who has been sanctified in his or her inner self (κατα` τ#ν Lσω α.νθρωπον) (Coll. II, Hom. 17. 13) as a result of unceasing dedication to the cross of Christ (Coll. II, Hom. 17. 1). Moreover, there are degrees of perfection (µτρα τελειτητο) (ibid.). In a remarkable passage, which seems to draw on personal experience, Macarius speaks of twelve steps ‘as it were’ that a person must pass through in order to reach perfection (Coll. II, Hom. 8. 4). The twelfth step, however, is experienced only in a fleeting way. Grace comes from time to time and then recedes again. Otherwise the mystic would simply sit in a corner permanently enraptured and intoxicated (µετωρον κα µεµεθυσµνον) and would cease to attend to his practical responsibilities (Coll. II, Hom. 8. 4; cf. Hom. 18. 7). No one is perfect in the sense of enjoying an uninterrupted communion with God. These observations are made in the course of answering a series of questions. The next question probes further: ‘Tell us about yourself. In what grade do you find yourself ?’ The author in his reply refers to a personal experience of the sign of the cross, ‘which appeared as light and penetrated the inner man’ (Coll. II, Hom. 8. 3). After this experience he felt a deep peace spread throughout his being and sensed a profound love for all men, including pagans and Jews. A person who has had such an experience puts his whole trust in Christ, and doors are opened to him and he enters into many mansions, and the further he goes in the more doors are opened to him. From a hundred mansions he enters into another hundred, and becomes enriched, and the more he becomes enriched, again other newer wonders are shown to him, and things are entrusted to him as a son and heir which may not be expressed by human nature or uttered by mouth or tongue. (Coll. II, Hom. 8. 6)

This is the epektasis, the never-ending progress into the mysteries of the spiritual life, that we also find in Gregory of Nyssa. In Gregory, however, the progress is from light through the cloud into darkness. In Macarius it is towards an ever-increasing perception of divine light. The experiential side of the spiritual life is brought out with dramatic effect by Macarius in his exegesis of Ezekiel’s vision of the throne-chariot of God (Ezek. 1: 1–28). He does not say that he ascended personally into heaven to participate in the vision himself, in the manner of the yored merkavah, but he does suggest how the biblical text may be appropriated by the believer and made part of his or her own experience: And that which the prophet actually saw was true and certain. But it was signifying something else and prefiguring a mystical and divine reality, a ‘mystery truly hidden for ages and generations’ (Col. 1: 26) and revealed in these last days with the coming of Christ. For the prophet was contemplating a mystery of the soul that was to

The Monastic Synthesis

245

receive its own Lord and become a throne of glory to him. For a soul that is counted worthy to participate in the Spirit of his light and is illuminated by the beauty of his ineffable glory, seeing that he has prepared it for himself as a throne and dwelling, becomes wholly light, and wholly face, and wholly eye. And there is no part of it that is not full of the spiritual eyes of light. That is to say, no part of it is in darkness, but has been turned entirely and completely into light and spirit. And it is wholly full of eyes since it has no backward or rear part, but faces forward in every way, seeing that the ineffable beauty of the glory of the light of the face of Christ has mounted it and sat upon it [. . .]. Thus the soul is illuminated perfectly by the ineffable beauty of the glory of the face of Christ and has participated perfectly in the Holy Spirit, and has been counted worthy to become a throne and dwelling of God. (Coll. II, Hom. 1. 2)

The theophany of Ezekiel’s vision is linked with that of Christ’s transfiguration, and in a remarkable spiritual exegesis, which perhaps owes something to the Jewish Merkabah tradition, the throne-chariot becomes the human soul which God takes possession of and makes his dwelling. We may therefore say that the deification of the believer takes place in three stages. In the first the soul participates in divine glory even in this life through sharing in the Holy Spirit, having been born from above from God and become a child of God (Coll II, Hom. 5. 4). But on the experiential level this gives us only a fleeting foretaste of what is to come. The second stage occurs when the soul is resurrected and glorified at the time of death (Coll II, Hom. 34. 2; 36. 1). When we lay aside the body we will not be naked because we shall be clothed by the Holy Spirit (Coll II, Hom. 5. 8). The third stage occurs at the end of time when the body, too, will share in the glory of the soul: But at the resurrection of bodies, the souls of which were previously raised and glorified, the bodies will also be glorified and illuminated with them by the soul which has already been illuminated and glorified. For the Lord is their house and tabernacle and city. They will put on the heavenly dwelling not made by human hands (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 1–2), the glory of divine light, since they have become children of light. They will not regard each other with a wicked eye. For wickedness has been rooted out. ‘There is neither male nor female there, neither slave nor free’ (Gal. 3: 28), for all have been transformed into a divine nature and have become christs and gods and children of God. (Coll II, Hom. 34. 2; cf. 5. 12)

All, however, will still retain their individuality, otherwise ‘there will be no Peter or Paul’ but ‘everything will be God’ (Coll. II, Hom. 15. 10). The absorption of the individual into the Godhead, condemned by Timothy of Constantinople as a Messalian proposition (No. 11, PG 86. 49c), is specifically excluded.

246

The Monastic Synthesis 3. Diadochus of Photice

In Diadochus, who became bishop of Photice in Old Epirus some time between 451 and 458,13 the ascetical theory of Evagrius Ponticus is combined with the experiential emphasis of Macarius to produce an impressive exposition of the stages of the spiritual life leading up to the final consummation of deification. (a) Vocabulary The technical vocabulary of deification appears only in the Sermon on the Ascension. Diadochus reserves it for the eschatological state of the human person, which is not discussed directly in his major work, the Gnostic Century. In the Sermon there is a single instance of the otherwise unrecorded verb θεωθω, which, if the manuscript tradition is correct, is Diadochus’ own intensified form of the verb θεω (Ascen. 6, SC 5 ter. 1145d). (b) Progress from Image to Likeness Diadochus makes a distinction between image and likeness. The image of God resides in the higher part of the soul and belongs to us in virtue of our creation (Perf. 78). This image was darkened by the Fall, which not only produced ‘wrinkles’ on the soul but also made the body subject to corruption. The Word of God became incarnate in order to remedy this situation. Through his baptism he granted us the waters of salvation. Baptism regenerates us by the operation of the life-giving Spirit, purifying us in body and soul. Against the Messalians Diadochus says that ‘it is not possible for the soul, since it is a unity and of a simple character, to have two prosopa in it, as some have thought’ (Perf. 78). There are no warring principles in the soul of good and evil. Baptism, the ‘bath of incorruption’, drives out the serpent. But it does not follow that we no longer have to engage in the moral struggle. The ‘bath of holiness’ may remove the ‘wrinkle’ of sin but it does not change the duality of our will. The ascetic struggle is still necessary. Nevertheless, baptism refurbishes the image of God within us and makes possible our subsequent spiritual development Growth in the spiritual life is represented by Diadochus as an ascent from the image to the likeness, as a recovery through the acquisition of the virtues, of humanity’s original closeness to God. Diadochus conveys the nature of this ascent by a striking simile. The difference between the image and the likeness resembles the difference between a cartoon and a finished portrait. First the artist draws an outline in a single colour. This is the image. Then he paints in the flesh tones and renders the effect of the hair, giving the portrait 13 Diadochus was not present at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 but he did respond to the questionnaire the Emperor Leo I sent out in 458, the answers to which are recorded in the Codex encyclius.

The Monastic Synthesis

247

its resemblance to the sitter, even down to the way he or she smiles. This is the likeness (Perf. 89). In more analytical terms the progress from image to likeness may be divided into three stages. Baptism merely conceals grace in the soul of the baptized. The first stage of its operation is when the whole person turns to the Lord. It is then that grace first makes itself felt in the heart as a sensible warmth. The second stage is when a person begins to advance in his or her observance of the commandments, ceaselessly calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus. In this stage divine grace is perceived as a fire burning up the tares growing on the soil of the human heart. The third stage is when a person has clothed himself or herself in all the virtues, and especially in perfect detachment from possessions. In this final stage grace illuminates the believer’s entire nature, being experienced as a profound feeling firing him or her with an intense love for God (Perf. 85). Diadochus’ use of the imagery of light and fire is particularly noteworthy. Through the acquisition of virtue we advance ‘from glory to glory’ (Perf. 89; cf. 2 Cor. 3: 18). Each degree of glory is accompanied by a greater intensity of illumination. We shall know when we have reached perfection, says Diadochus, because ‘we shall recognize the perfection of the likeness from the illumination’ (Perf. 89). In the final stages, when the intellect begins to come frequently under the influence of the divine light, it becomes entirely transparent, with the result that it can see its own light in abundance (Perf. 40) (cf. Polyzogopoulos 1985: 96/198). (c) Arrival at Perfection To be perfect is to be permeated with the light and love of God. Indeed, the person who has reached perfection is wholly transformed by such love: Such a person is present in life and at the same time not present. For although he is dwelling in his own body, he is dwelling out of it through love, in virtue of the ceaseless movement of the soul towards God. For henceforth, his heart burning with love, he steadfastly cleaves to God by a compelling desire, as if stepping outside ( δ; θωσ στιν > πρ# θε#ν φυ´σι ν τ- σ(µατι. Κα / νο µ;ν τ ψυχ αποθωσι στν > δ; φυ´σι το σ(µατο, δια´χυσι *πα´ρχει. 168: τ#ν θε#ν τ#ν τα` πα´ντα ε' σωτηραν κα αποθωσιν ανθρ(που ποι!σαντα. Cf. I. Hausherr, ‘Un écrit stoicien sous le nom de Saint Antoine Ermite’, OCP 86 (Rome 1933): 212–16. 14 15

Appendix 2

337

The use of αποθωσι in a pagan philosophical context does not occur again until the fifth century, when the Neoplatonist Hierocles refers twice to apotheosis as the result of the attainment of virtue (In Carmen Aureum, 27. 2, ed. Koehler, 119. 13); 27. 4, (120. 12). Among Christian authors Clement of Alexandria (d. c.213), Origen (d. c.253), Gregory Thaumaturgus (d. c.270), Apollinarius (d. c.390), Didymus the Blind (d. c.398), Macarius Magnes (fl. 400), Nestorius (d. after 450), Ps.-Macarius (fifth century), and Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) employ these terms. Clement refers six times to the deification of outstanding men in a Euhemeristic fashion (Prot. 10. 96. 4; Strom. 1. 105. 1, 3, and 4; 1. 137. 3; 3. 5. 2). Origen uses αποθεω twice in the same way (Hom. Jer. 5. 3; C. Cels. 4. 59). But he also uses the verb in a manner not unlike that of the Hermetists to denote the deification of those who choose to live according to virtue rather than according to the flesh (Com. Matt. 16. 29; In Psalm. 81). Gregory, Origen’s pupil, claims in a similar way that the virtue of prudence reflects the divine mind and produces ‘a kind of apotheosis’ (Panegyric 11). Didymus applies αποθεω in a novel way to the effect on the believer of baptism, which ‘immortalizes and deifies us’ (απαθανατο κα αποθεο >µα˜) (De Trin. 2. 14). Apollinarius uses the same verb to denote the deification of the flesh assumed by the Logos, a usage which Nestorius reproduces only to condemn (Frag. 98; cf. Loofs, Nestoriana, pp. 265, 275). Macarius Magnes says that when a man honours his Maker, ‘he deifies himself by sharing in the Godhead’ ()αυτ#ν δ  αποθεο κοινωνν τA θετητι) (Apocriticus 4. 16). The Macarian homilies refer to a man’s being deified and becoming a son of God when he has undergone spiritual regeneration: αποθεοται γα`ρ λοιπ#ν / τοιοτο κα γγνεται υ2# θεο (Mac. Hom. (Coll. II) 15. 35). When a man has been deified in this way he becomes greater than the first Adam (Mac. Hom. (Coll. II) 26. 2). Maximus uses αποθεω on a single occasion to express the exchange formula: ‘Man’s ability to deify himself through love for God’s sake is correlative to God’s becoming man through compassion for man’s sake’ (Amb. Io. 10, PG 91. 1113b). Finally, we may note in Gregory of Nyssa a new compound form, συναποθεω to denote the deification of the human nature of Christ contemporaneously with the Incarnation (Orat. Cat. 35, 37). The first Christians to use αποθεω and αποθωσι, Clement and Origen, thus follow a recognizable contemporary usage which their successors extend to embrace the operation of baptism and the transformation of the flesh at the Incarnation. This Christian usage, however, remains rare.

(ii) Θεοποιω––θεοποιKα––θεοποησι––θεοποι The earliest instance of θεοποιω occurs in an inscription of between 27 and 11 bce in which the citizens of Mytilene promise to look out for any honours that can deify Augustus even more than those they have already voted him.20 This is the only pagan use of θεοποιω with reference to the ruler-cult. 20 OGI 456. 44–50: ε' δ τι του´των πικυδστερον το µετπειτα χρνοι ευρεθ!σεται, πρ# µη[δ;ν] τν θεοποιεν αυτ#ν π [πλ]ον δυνησοµνων λλεψει[ν] τ4ν τ πλεω προθυµαν κα ευσβειαν. Cf. Habicht 1970: 176–7; S. R. F. Price 1980: 34–5.

338

Appendix 2

The first appearance of θεοποιω in a literary text occurs in about 7 bce when Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the peculiar circumstances of the death of Romulus lend support to those who ‘deify mortal things’ (το θεοποιοσι τα` θνητα´) (Ant. Rom. 2. 56. 6). In the second century Lucian says with some irony in the first chapter of The Scythian that the enrolment of Toxaris among the heroes in Athens shows that ‘it is also possible for the Athenians to deify Scythians in Greece, (αλλα` κα Α  θηναοι ξεναι θεοποιεν του` Σκυ´θα π τ 8 Ελλα´δο) Scyth. 1. The only other pagan author to use θεοποιω is Sextus Empiricus (fl. c.200 ce), who says that the Pythagoreans used to treat Pythagoras as a god (τοτον γα`ρ θεοποουν) (Adv. Math. 7. 94), that the Stoic sage ‘was in all respects considered a god because he never expressed a mere opinion’ (κατα` πα´ντα θεοποιετο δια` τ# µ4 δοξα´ζειν) (Adv. Math. 7. 423), and that ‘Euhemerus declared that those considered gods were certain men of power, which is why they were deified by the rest and reputed to be gods’ (κα δια` τοτο *π# τν α.λλων θεοποιηθντα δξαι θεου´) (Adv. Math. 9. 51). Θεοποιω, while remaining uncommon among pagan writers, became the preferred verb among Christians to denote both pagan and Christian deification. The Apologists use the verb a number of times to denote the pagan deification of inanimate things.21 Clement is the first to apply it to Christian deification.22 Thereafter the verb is used by Hippolytus (Ref. 10. 34), Origen23 and Eusebius of Caesarea,24 then by Athanasius (with great frequency),25 and subsequently by Didymus the Blind,26 the three Cappadocians,27 and Apollinarius of Laodicea28 in the fourth century, Macarius Magnes,29 Ps.-Macarius,30 and Cyril of Alexandria31 in the fifth century, Leontius of Jerusalem32 in the sixth century, and Maximus the Confessor33 in the seventh century. In terms of frequency of use, θεοποιω, largely through the influence of Athanasius, becomes by the fourth century a word with a primarily Christian range of meanings. Towards the end of the patristic age, however, it tends to be replaced by θεω. The earliest witness to the noun θεοποιKα is the scholar Julius Pollux (second century ce), who defines it as the art of making statues of the gods (Onomast. 1. 13). A century later (c.270) Porphyry uses it to denote the Egyptian deification of animals (De Abstin. 4. 9). In the following century Athanasius34 and Eusebius35 use it in a similar way for the invention of gods by the pagans in general. In the fifth century Hierocles is able to use the word for deification by progress in virtue, but no 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Aristides, Apol. 7. 11; 13. 1; Athenagoras, Legat. 22. 9, 10, 12; Tatian, Orat. 18. Prot. 9. 87. 1; 11. 114. 4; Strom. 6. 125. 4. For references, see p. 141. But comparatively rarely; see p. 236. For references, see p. 167. Com. Gen. (SC 244, p. 248); De Trin. 2. 4, 25; 3. 2, 16. Basil, Adv. Eun. 3. 5; Greg. Naz. Or. 2. 73; Greg. Nys. De Virg. 1; C. Eun. 4. 629d. Quod unus sit Christus 1; Kata meros pistis 1, 31. Apocrit. 4. 18, 26. Mac. Hom. (Coll. I) 2. 12. 6. Thes. 4. 15, 33; Dial. Trin. vii. 640a, 644d. Adv. Nest. 3. 8; 5. 25. Ep. 31; Myst. 7. CG 12. 21, 29. Praep. evang. 1. 5; 2. 6; 3. 3, 5, 13; 4. 17; Dem. evang. 1. 2; Is. 19. 1; 41. 15.

Appendix 2

339

Christian ever uses it in this sense.36 Instead, Christians use the form θεοποησι, which is first encountered in the writings of Athanasius,37 and appears again in Didymus38 and Cyril of Alexandria.39 The adjectival noun θεοποι survives in a fragment from Aristophanes (frag. 786/7). Without a context its meaning is uncertain, but it probably means ‘a maker of statues of the gods’. This is the sense it has in Lucian’s Lover of Lies (Philopseudes 20), and is also the definition given by Julius Pollux (Onomasticon 1. 13). The first Christian author to use the word, Clement of Alexandria, follows the same usage, but alongside this he also gives it a new adjectival sense, namely, ‘deifying’ (Prot. 4. 51. 6; QDS 19). It remains a rare word, being used once by Origen (Sel. in Exod. 1. 3), Methodius (Symposium 9. 4), Athanasius (De Syn. 51), Apollinarius (Kata meros pistis 27), Ps.-Basil of Caesarea (Adv. Eunom. 5. 732b), and Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. 4. 16), twice by Gregory of Nazianzus (Or. 3. 1; Carm. ii. 2. 7), and Cyril of Alexandria (Dial. Trin. v. 567e; vii. 644d), and four times by Ps.-Dionysius (CH 1. 1. 120b; DN 2. 1. 637b; 11. 6. 956b; Ep. 2. 1068a). We find it taken up in the sense first attested by Clement of Alexandria, however, by the late Neoplatonists Proclus (In Tim. 5. 308d, (ed. Diehl, iii. 226. 28), Hierocles (In Carm. Aur. 19. 10 (84. 1)), and Damascius (V. Isidori, ed. Zintzen, 207. 8). (iii) Ε  κθεω/κθειω––κθωσι––κθεωτικ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the earliest literary author to use θεοποιω is also the first witness to κθειω. In offering a rationalistic explanation of how Pistis or Fides came to be worshipped in Rome, he says that Numa added Pistis to Dike, Nemesis, and Erinyes, which had already been deified (κτεθεισθαι), so as to strengthen the force of contracts which had been made without a witness (Ant. Rom. 2. 75. 2). Our next witness is the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria (fl. 39 ce), who uses κθειω several times in his references to the pagan deification of animals, men, and heavenly bodies.40 At the end of the first century Plutarch uses κθειω in his discussion of how Herodotus has cheapened the story of Io, ‘whom all Greeks consider to have been deified’ (nν πα´ντε _ Ελληνε κτεθεισθαι νοµζουσι) by the barbarians (Moralia 856e). Εκθεω occurs for the first time in Appian, who uses it to signify the dedication of an altar.41 The first witness to its use with the meaning ‘to deify’ is Clement of Alexandria, who uses it in both a pagan and a Christian context.42 Origen also uses the word but only once and with a pejorative sense.43 Christian writers, however, did In Carmen Aureum 27. 5 (ed. Koehler, 120. 16). CA 1. 39; 2. 70; 3. 53. On Genesis (SC 233, p. 109. 12). 39 C. Nest. 2. 8. 40 Decalogue 8, 53, 70, 79; Spec. Leg. 1. 10, 344; Conf. 173. 41 The Civil Wars 3. 3: τ4ν αγορα`ν οYν καταλαβντε βων κα τ#ν Α  ντ(νιον βλασφ!µουν κα τα` αρχα` κλευον αντ Α  µατου τ#ν βωµ#ν κθεον κα θυ´ειν π αυτο Κασαρι πρ(του. 42 Prot. 2. 26. 5; Paed. 1. 98. 3; Strom. 1. 105. 1. 43 Hom. Jer. 5. 2; cf. Aelian (who was a younger contemporary of Clement’s and an older contemporary of Origen’s), De nat. anim. 10. 23: σβουσι δ; α.ρα ο2 αυτο Κοπτται κα θηλεα δορκα´δα κα κθεοσιν αυτα´, του` δ; α.ρρενα καταθυ´ουσιν. Cf. Preisendanz, P. Graec. Mag. i. 2455–9: λαβXν µυγαλ#ν κθωσον πηγαB Pδατι. 36 37 38

340

Appendix 2

not adopt the term. By contrast, it does become important among the Neoplatonists. Porphyry (232/3–c. 305) says that a man deifies (κθεο) himself by attaining likeness to the divine.44 Proclus (c. 410–83) uses κθεω frequently, particularly in his Commentary on the Timaeus, to express the divinity which is acquired by participation in the divine. Only the One and the demiurge are gods per se; the rest are κθεου´µενοι.45 Ps.Dionysius betrays a Procline influence with two instances of κθεω (DN 1. 5. 593b; 8. 5. 893a). Hermias refers to Dionysus as one of the κθεου´µενοι (Schol. in Phaedr. 135a, (ed. Couvreur, 138. 24). Damascius, the last head of the Academy in the sixth century, takes it for granted that only the *περου´σιο θε is God in the true sense; the others are κθεου´µενοι (Dub. et sol. 100, (ed. Ruelle, 1. 258. 3). For the origins of κθωσι we must probably go back to Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 bce). On the deification of Arsinoe I of Egypt in 270 bce he wrote a celebratory poem which the later summary of his works, the Diegesis, entitles the Ε  κθωσι Α  ρσινη (Dieg. 10. 10, Callimachus, ed. Pfeiffer, 1. 218, frag. 228). It always remained a rare noun. It appears with αποθωσι without any discernible difference of meaning in the Canopus Decree of 238 bce (OGI 56. 53). It is the term used by Philo for the setting up of false gods in general and for the self-deification of Caligula in particular (Leg. 77, 201, 332, 338, 368; Dec. 81). But it does not seem to be used again until the fifth century ce, when we find it in Proclus (In Remp., ed. Kroll, i. 120. 17). Proclus also uses an adjectival form, κθεωτικ, which he seems to have coined himself.46 The first author to find a Christian use for κθεω, κθωσι, κθεωτικ is Ps.-Dionysius.47

(iv)

Θεω––θωσι

Θεω appears first in Callimachus, the earliest writer to have used any of the technical terms of deification. He represents Heracles as still gluttonous among the gods ‘although his flesh had been deified [i.e. by self-immolation] beneath a Phrygian oak’ (ου γα`ρ : γε ΦρυγN περ δρυ γυα θεωθε/παυ´σατ  αδηφαγη)(Hymn III to Artemis 159–60). Not long afterwards another Alexandrian, the Jewish writer Ps.-Aristeas, uses θεω in his comments on the absurdity of pagan deification (Ep. ad Phil., SC 89, p. 170). Thereafter there is silence until the verb is revived in the second century ce by the Cynic philosopher Oenomaus of Gadara (fl. c. 120), to pour scorn on the notion that one of the gods had deified a certain olive trunk.48 Θεω appears in the Poemandres of the Hermetic Corpus to express the state of the soul that has stripped away the passions through true knowledge and, assimilated to the Powers, has entered the 44 To Marcella 17: αυτ# δ; )αυτ#ν κα ευα´ρεστον ποιε θε- κα κθεο τA τ 'δα διαθσεω /µοιτητι τ- µετα` αφθαρσα µακαρB. 45 El. Theol. 129, 135, 138, 153, 160; In Remp. (ed. Kroll, ii. 48.10–12); In Tim., prooem. 3ef. 46 El. Theol. 165; In Parm., 4. 838 (ed. Cousin); In Tim. 5. 302b (ed. Diehl, iii. 205. 6); 5. 302d (iii. 206. 26); 5. 302f (iii. 207. 25); 5. 306d (iii. 220. 12); 5. 313b (iii. 241. 19). 47 These all occur in the most philosophical of his works. Εκθεω: DN 1. 5. 593c; 8. 5. 893a; κθωσι: DN 9. 5. 912d; 12. 3. 972a; κθεωτικ: DN 2. 7. 645a. 48 Cited by Eusebius, Prep. evang. 5. 34: κατοι ε' ασφαλ; Jν, ουκ α`ν Jν πιβατ#ν ληρ- ουδ αRν εG τι τν  Ολυµπων ε' τοτο Jλθεν παρανοα